LAMB'S 
ESSAYS 

OF 

ELIA 


XNf^-^^' 


^Trt^  POCKET  •  Ae; 


MACMILLANS 


THE  ESSAYS   OF  ELIA 


^JT)^^^ 


CHARLES   LA.MB. 
From  the  Portrait  by  William  Hazlitt,  1805. 


S-irm 


THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 


WITH  INTRODUCTION  AND  NOTES 
BY 

HELEN   J.    ROBINS 

TEACHER  OF  ENGLISH  IN  MISS   BALDWIN'S  SCHOOL 
BRYN  MAWR 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.-  Ltd. 

1908 

All  righis  reservecl 


m 


COPTRIGHT,   1905, 

By  the  MAGMILLAIf  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  August,  1905.     Reprinted 
August,  1906;  March,  1907;  April,  1908. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction ix 

ESSAYS:    FIB  ST  SEBIES 


The  South-Sea  House  .... 
Oxford  in  the  Vacation 
Christ's  Hospital  Five  and  Thirty  Years  Ago 
The  Two  Races  or  Men 

New  Year's  Eve 

Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist 
A  Chapter  on  Ears  .... 
All  Fools'  Dav  ..... 
A  Quakers'  Meeting  .... 
The  Old  and  the  New  Schoolmaster 
A'alentine's  Day  ..... 
Imperfect  Sympathies 

^^ITCHES,    AND    OTHER    NiGHT-FeARS 

My  Relations 

Mackery  End  in  Hertfordshire 
Modern  Gallantry       .... 
The  Old  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple 
Grace  before  Meat      .      •  . 

V 


14 
27 
32 
39 
45 
50 
54 
59 
67 
70 
78 
84 
91 
95 
99 
110 


VI 


COXTEXTS 


PACK 

My  First  Play 117 

Dream-Children  :  A  Reverie 121 

Distant  Correspondents       .......  125 

The  Praise  of  Chimney-Sweepers 131 

A  Complaint   of    the    Decay   of    Beggars    in    the    Me- 
tropolis  ..........  138 

A  Dissertation  upon  Roast  Pig 145 

A  Bachelor's  Complaint  of  the  Behaviour  of  Married 

People 152 

On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors       ......  159 

On  the  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last  Century'    .         .  170 

On  the  Acting  of  Munden ,  178 


LAST  ESSAYS 

Blakesmoor  in  II shire  .... 

Poor  Relations      ...... 

Detached  Thoughts  on  Books  and  Reading 

Stage  Illusion 

To  the  Shade  of  Elliston  .... 

Ellistoniana 

The  Old  Margate  Hoy 

The  Convalescent 

Sanity  of  True  Genius         .... 

Captain  Jackson    ...... 

The  Superannuated  Man     .... 

The  Genteel  Style  in  Writing 
Barbara  S .         .         .         .     '    . 


186 
191 

197 
203 
206 
209 
214 
222 
226 
229 
233 
240 
245 


CONTENTS  vii 

PAGE 

The  Tombs  in  the  Abbey .  250 

Amicus  Redivivus 253 

Some  Soxxets  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney  .....  257 
Neavspapers  Thirty-five  Years  Ago  .....  266 
Barrenness   of   the    Imaginative   Faculty   in   the   Pro- 
ductions OF  Modern  Art 273 

Rejoicings  upon  the  New  Year's  Coming  of  Age   .         .  284 

The  Wedding 289 

The  Child  Angel  :   A  Dream 295 

A  Death-Bed 297 

Old  China 299 

Popular  Fallacies  : 

I.     That  a  Bully  is  always  a  Coward         .         .  305 

II,     That  Ill-gotten  Gain  never  Prospers   .         .  306 

III.  That  a  Man  must  not  Laugh  at  his  own  Jest  306 

IV.  That  Such  a  One  shows  his  Breeding  —  That 

IT  is  Easy  to  perceive  he  is  no  Gentleman  307 
V.     That  the  Poor  copy  the  Vices  of  the  Rich  307 
VI.     That  Enough  is  as  Good  as  a  Feast       .         .  309 
VII.     Of  Two  Disputants,  the  Warmest  is  gener- 
ally IN  the  Wrong 310 

VIII.     That    Verbal    Allusions    are    not  Wit,    be- 
cause    THEY    WILL    not    BEAR   A    TRANSLATION  311 

IX.     That  the  Worst  Puns  are  the  Best       .         .311 

X.     That  Handsome  is  that  Handsome  does          .  314 
XI.     That  ave  must  not  look  a  Gift  Horse  in  the 

Mouth 310 


viii  co^'TE^^TS 

PAGE 

Popular  Fallacies  : 

XII.     That    Home   is   Home   though   it  is  never  so 

Homely 318 

XIII.  That  you  must  love  Me  and  love  my  Dog    .  322 

XIV.  That  we  should  rise  with  the  Lark      .         .  32<) 
XV.     That  we  should  lie  down  with  the  Lamb     .  328 

XVI.     That  a  Sulky  Temper  is  a  Misfortune           .  330 

Notes 335 


INTRODUCTION 


The  story  of  Charles  Lamb  is  soon  told,  and  needs  no  com- 
ment. "  He  neither  preached  nor  prescribed,"  wrote  one  of  his 
friends,  "but  let  his  own  actions  tell  their  tale  and  produce 
their  natural  effects."  His  life  was  lacking  in  event.  He  lived 
it  altogether  in  his  "ever-dear"  London,  or  the  immediate 
neighbourhood,  —  visiting  the  continent  but  once,  and  then  for 
only  a  few^  weeks.  One  tragic  happening  in  his  twenty-first 
year  determined  his  career  for  him  ;  this  —  the  only  fact  of 
ills  life  which  never  found  its  way  into  his  writings,  and  which 
w^as  even  unknown  to  many  of  his  friends  during  his  lifetime  — 
pointed  out  to  him  the  path  which  he  followed  "  courageous 
and  faithful  to  the  end."  To  Lamb,  "  one  of  the  rarest  and 
most  delicate  of  the  Humourists  of  England,"  Coleridge  writes 
in  this  year  :  — 

"  I  look  upon  you  as  a  man  called  by  sorrow  and  anguish  and 
a  strange  desolation  of  hope  into  quietness,  and  a  soul  set 
apart  and  made  peculiar  to  God." 

There  was  insanity  in  the  family  of  the  Lambs.  Charles 
himself  had  fallen  a  victim  to  it,  although  but  once,  at  the  close 
of  his  twentieth  year,  and  then  for  only  a  short  time.  "  The 
six  weeks  that  finished  last  year  and  began  this,"  he  writes 
characteristically  to  Coleridge,  "  your  humble  servant  spent 
very  agreeably  in  a  mad  house  at  Hoxton."  In  his  case  there 
was  never  any  return,  but  his  elder  sister,  INIary,  had  not  been 
quite  free  from  the  malady,  and  when  she  was  thirty-two,  in 
the  year  1796,  in  a  more  violent  attack  than  had  ever  before 
seized  her,  she  killed  her  mother.  Charles  "  was  at  hand,"  he 
said,  "  only  time  enough  to  snatch  the  knife  from  her  grasp." 
From  this  year  on,  the  mania  returned  at  intervals,  —  though 
always  afterward  with  some  warning,  —  and  it  would  often  be 

ix 


X  IXTRODUCTIOy 

necessary  for  her  to  leave  home,  and  to  remain  in  an  asylum 
sometimes  for  several  months  together. 

Her  younger  brother  now  devoted  his  life  to  her;  — from  this 
moment  he  forgot  his  own  interests  in  hers,  —  forgot  himself  so 
completely  indeed  that  it  seemed  to  him  Mary  who  was  sacri- 
ficing her  life  to  his.  In  truth,  it  would  be  as  vain  as  unneces- 
sary to  attempt  to  distinguish ;  the  brotlier  and  sister  gave 
themselves  up  wholly  each  to  the  other,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
consider  them  apart.  Their  friends  spoke  of  them  together, 
one  name  always  brought  the  other  with  it;  the  personal  pro- 
noun in  Charles's  correspondence  is  as  often  "we  "  as  "  I,"  and 
his  letters  to  their  friends  close  with  "  our  loves,"  "  our  best 
good  wishes,"  or  with  "  believe  us,  yours  most  truly." 

During  all  the  thirty-eight  years  lived  together  thus  by  the 
brother  and  sister,  — only  one  of  which  was  not  marked  by  an 
illness  of  ]Mary's,  —  Charles  Lamb  was  never  at  peace,  but 
always  anxious,  always  watchful ;  asking  his  friends  not  to 
come  to  his  house  when  symptoms  of  the  malady  began  to  show 
themselves,  cutting  himself  off  from  visitors  and  visits  when 
these  would  be  dangerous  to  Mary,  and  hardest  of  all,  at  times 
losing  her  loved  companionship. 

"  What  sad  large  pieces  it  cuts  out  of  life,"  he  writes  to  Cole- 
ridge, in  1809,  —  "out  of  her  life,  who  is  getting  rather  old: 
and  we  may  not  have  many  years  to  live  together.  I  am 
weaker  and  bear  it  worse  than  I  ever  did.  But  I  hope  we 
shall  all  be  comfortable  by  and  by."  Year  after  year  such  pas- 
sages find  their  way  into  his  correspondence.  "  My  house  is 
full  at  present,  but  empty  of  its  chief  pride.  She  is  dead  to 
me  for  many  months."  And,  in  1825,  to  another  friend: 
"  My  sister  ...  is  laid  up,  deprived  of  reason  for  many  weeks 
to  come,  I  fear.  She  is  in  the  same  house,  but  we  do  not  meet. 
It  makes  both  worse.  ...  If  you  come  this  way  any  morning, 
I  can  only  just  shake  you  by  tlie  hand.  This  gloomy  house 
does  not  admit  of  my  making  my  friends  welcome." 

This  then  is  the  main  fact  of  Lamb's  life.  The  rest  of  his 
biography  he  has  written  for  us  in  his  essays.  Born  February 
10,  1775,  in  Crown  Office  Row,  in  the  Inner  Temple,  he  was  the 
youngest  of  the  three  children  of  John  and  Elizabeth  Lamb,  of 
whom  the  eldest  was  another  son,  John.      For   his   brother 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

Charles  entertained  a  real  affection,  reflected  in  all  he  writes  of 
hiai  under  the  name  "James  Elia";  —  although  that  brother 
seems  to  have  done  nothing  to  help  his  family  when  they  were 
in  poverty,  and,  as  we  know  from  Mary's  letters,  left  the  burden 
of  the  tragedy,  too,  upon  the  younger  son. 

The  early  associations  of  Charles  Lamb  with  the  Temple 
find  their  expression  in  the  essay  on  the  Old  Benchers,  as  the 
best  account  of  his  schooldays  is  in  Christ's  Hospital  Thirty- 
Five  Years  Ago.  At  school  he  formed  the  friendship  of  a  life- 
time with  Coleridge,  who  was  three  years  older  than  he  was. 
Lamb  loved  him  truly  as  a  man,  and  placed  him  first  among 
modern  poets.  AYhen  he  left  school  at  fifteen,  it  was  not 
however  to  enter  the  university  with  Coleridge,  but  to  take  up 
some  work  that  should  help  him  to  support  his  family ;  for  his 
mother  was  an  invalid,  his  father  was  helpless  through  illness 
and  age. 

"  It  was  at  a  very  tender  age  that  Charles  Lamb  entered  the 
work-a-day  world,"  says  Barry  Cornw^all.  "  His  brother  John 
had  at  that  time  a  clerkship  in  the  South-Sea  House,  and 
Charles  passed  a  short  time  there  under  his  brother's  care  or 
control,  and  must  thus  have  gained  some  knowledge  of  figures. 
.  .  .  Charles  remained  in  this  office  only  until  the  5th  April, 
1792,  when  he  obtained  an  appointment  as  clerk  in  the 
Accountant's  Otiice  of  the  East  India  Company.  He  was  then 
seventeen  years  of  age." 

Here,  for  thirty-three  years.  Lamb  worked  every  day  from 
ten  to  four  o'clock.  As  we  know  from  his  letters,  the  work 
was  irksome  to  him,  and  he  longed  for  freedom,  and  for  lime. 
"  O,  for  a  few  years  between  the  grave  and  the  desk !  "  His 
happiness  in  emancipation  —  so  great  as  to  be  at  first  over- 
whelming and  almost  oppressive  —  is  reflected  in  his  corre- 
spondence in  April,  182.5,  when  the  company  allowed  him  to 
retire,  with  a  pension  for  the  rest  of  his  life  and  a  provision 
for  his  vsister,  in  case  —  as  did  hajipen  —  she  should  outlive 
him.  His  literary  record  of  this  circumstance  is  the  biographi- 
cal essay.  The  Superannuated  Man.  There  were  left  him, 
however,  but  few  years  in  which  to  enjoy  his  new  liberty.  He 
died  in  December  of  the  year  18ol,  at  Edmonton,  where  he  lies 
buried.     His  sister  survived  him  for  thirteen  years,  during  the 


Xil  INTRODUCTION 

greater  part  of  which  she  was  happily  deprived  of  the  under- 
standing to  appreciate  her  loss. 

It  was  in  the  early  years  of  visits  to  his  grandmother,  Mrs. 
Field,  housekeeper  of  the  manor  house  of  the  Plumers  in 
Hertfordshire,  that  there  occurred  the  so-called  love-affair 
with  the  •'  fair-haired  maid"  of  his  sonnets,  —  referred  to  there 
as  ''  Anna,"  and  over  and  over  again  in  the  essays  as  "  Alice 

W n."  for  which   the    name  ••  Winterton  "  is    supplied  in 

Lamb's  Key.  In  an  article  republished  from  the  Cornhill  in 
LittelVs  Lirii7g  Ar/e,  June,  1904,  entitled  Ho>c  I  traced  Charles 
Lamb  in  Hert/onhhire,  Canon  Ainger,  the  late  ardent  student 
and  editor  of  Lamb,  quotes  a  conversation  with  Mrs.  Tween, 
whom  he  met  in  Widford,  —  one  of  the  daughters  of  that  Mr. 
Randall  Xorris,  an  old  and  valued  friend  of  the  Lamb  family, 
whose  death  is  so  beautifully  described  in  The  Death-Bed, 
one  of  The  Last  Essai/s  of  Elia.  From  Mrs.  Tween  Canon 
Ainger  eagerly  inquired  about  Alice  :  "  Did  she  actually  live  in 
Widford,  and  what  was  her  name  ?  '  Yes ;  she  lived  very  near 
Blakesware.'  .  .  .  And  her  name?  '  Oh  I  her  name  was  Xancy 
Simmons!  Ann,  .  .  .  but  she  was  always  called  Xancy.' 
Ann  Simmons  then  had  been  the  Anna,  the  Alice  with  the 
watchet  eyes  and  the  '  yellow  Hertfordshire  hair.'  .  .  .  How 
or  why  Lamb's  bopsh  passion  was  unrequited  —  whether  his 
poverty  or  the  taint  of  insanity  in  the  family  proved  the  fatal 
obstacle  —  Mrs.  Tween  could  not  tell  me." 

We  know,  however,  that  Anna,  or  Alice,  married  a  Mr. 
Bartram,  a  silvei'smith  in  Soho,  and  whether  or  not  Lamb  was 
really  deeply  in  earnest  in  the  love-affair,  we  hear  no  more  of  it 
after  the  dreadful  happening  of  1796.  In  this  year  he  had  pub- 
lished some  sonnets  and  other  poems  with  Coleridge,  but  now 
he  writes  to  his  friend  :  — 

"  Mention  nothing  of  poetry,  I  have  destroyed  every  vestige 
of  past  vanities  of  that  kind.  ...  I  am  wedded  to  the  for- 
tunes of  my  sister  and  my  poor  old  father." 

Before  the  date  of  this  letter,  the  family  had  moved  from  the 
Temple  to  Little  Queen  Street,  Holborn,  where  the  father  died 
within  a  few  months,  and  from  this  time  on  Charles  and  Mary 
were  never  many  years  in  any  one  place.  Mary's  malady  made 
them  unwelcome  inmates,  and  we  find  them  in  no  less  than 


INTRODUCTION-  xiii 

eleven  lodgings  between  1796  and  1834.  Every  few  years  there 
is  some  notice  of  a  change  in  Lamb's  letters  to  his  friends.  To 
Thomas  Manning  he  writes  in  1809,  jestingly,  for  Manning  was 
then  in  China:  — 

"Don't  come  anymore  to  Mitre  Court  Buildings,  AVe  are 
at  34,  Southampton  Buildings,  Chancery  Lane,  and  shall  be 
here  until  about  the  end  of  May ;  then  we  remove  to  Xo.  4, 
Inner  Temple  Lane,  where  I  mean  to  live  and  die ;  for  I  have 
such  a  horror  of  moving  that  I  would  not  take  a  benefice  from 
the  King  if  I  was  not  indulged  wdth  non-residence.  What  a 
dislocation  of  comfort  is  comprised  in  that  word  'moving'! 
Such  a  heap  of  little  nasty  things,  after  you  think  all  is  got 
into  the  cart;  .  .  .  things  that  it  is  impossible  the  most  neces- 
sitous person  can  ever  want,  but  which  the  women,  who  pre- 
side on  these  occasions,  will  not  leave  behind,  if  it  was  to  save 
your  soul.  .  .  .  Then  you  can  find  nothing  you  Avant  for  many 
days  after  you  get  into  3'our  lodgings.  .  .  .  Were  I  Diogenes 
I  would  not  move  out  of  a  kilderkin  into  a  hogshead,  though 
the  first  had  had  nothing  but  small  beer  in  it,  and  the  second 
reeked  claret." 

And  when  he  has  settled  in  4  Inner  Temple  Lane,  he  writes 
to  Coleridge  in  the  spirit  of  the  essay  on  Xew  Year's  Eve: 
"  Alas  !  the  household  gods  are  slow  to  come  in  a  new  man- 
sion. They  are  in  their  infancy  to  me ;  I  do  not  feel  them  yet. 
How  I  hate  and  dread  new  places  !  " 

His  biographer,  Talfourd,  gives  it  as  his  opinion  that  these 
years  spent  in  the  Inner  Temple  were  the  happiest  of  Lamb's 
life,  —  and  he  dwells  at  delightful  length  upon  the  "  "Wednes- 
day evenings  "  at  the  Lambs,  of  which  William  Hazlitt  too 
has  left  contemporary  accounts.  At  the  close  of  the  letter  to 
Manning  quoted  above,  Lamb  touches  with  characteristic  sim- 
plicity upon  these  meetings  which  have  become  famous  :  — 

"  On  Wednesdays  is  my  levee.  The  Captain,  jNIartin,  Phillips 
(not  the  sheriff),  Rickman,  and  some  more  are  constant  attend- 
ants, besides  stray  visitors.  We  play  at  whist,  eat  cold  meat 
and  hot  potatoes,  and  any  gentleman  that  chooses,  smokes, 
"Why  do  you  never  drop  in?  You'll  come  some  day,  won't 
you?" 

"  I  went  late  to  Lamb's,"  reads  an  entry  in  Henry  Crabb 


XIV  INTRODUCTION 

Robinson's  diary.  "  His  party  was  there,  and  a  numerous  and 
odd  set  they  were,  for  the  most  part  interesting  and  amusing 
people."  Sometimes  the  two  great  poets  would  come,  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge,  both  Lamb's  dear  friends.  "A  large 
party  gathered  round  the  poets,"  writes  Crabb  liobinson  again, 
••  but  Coleridge  had  tlie  larger  number."  Or  that  extraordinary 
genius  was  tiiere,  William  Hazlitt,  whom  Lamb  considered 
"  to  be,  in  his  natural  and  healthy  state,  one  of  the  wisest  and 
finest  spirits  breathing."  Leigh  Hunt  too  would  "drop  in,"  — 
the  famous  editor  of  the  Examiner,  the  political  paper  which 
aimed  to  '^  produce  reform  in  Parliament  and  liberality  of 
opinion  in  general," — Hunt,  the  friend  of  the  most  famous 
literary  men  of  his  time,  the  Harold  Skimpole  of  Dickens's 
Bleak  House;  Crabb  Robinson,  "that  true  winner  in  the  game 
of  life,  whose  leisure  hours,  achieved  early,  were  devoted  to  his 
friends";  or  Lamb's  first  biographers,  "the  juvenile  Talfourd," 
and  "  Barry  Cornwall  " — Bryan  Waller  Procter,  —  "  the  school- 
mate of  Lord  Byron  and  Sir  Robert  Peel  at  Harrow,  the  friend 
and  companion  of  Keats,  Lamb,  Shelley,  Coleridge,  Landor, 
Hunt,  Talfourd,  and  Rogers, —  the  man  to  whom  Thackeray 
dedicated  his  Vanity  Fair." 

If  it  is  true  that,  as  Matthew  Arnold  has  said,  "the  great 
record  for  the  outward  life  of  a  man  "  is  "  the  clear  consenting 
voice  of  all  his  contemporaries  ...  in  praise  of  his  sincerity, 
justice,  and  goodness,"  —  it  is  significant  indeed  that  all  these 
friends  loved  Lamb  truly,  and  that  they  have  left  the  "great 
record"  —  they  and  many  others  —  in  their  letters,  in  notices 
at  the  time  of  his  death,  in  memoir  and  biography  later. 
They  respected  him  deeply  and  valued  him  for  the  strength  of 
his  goodness,  for  the  sympathy  and  help  he  gave  them  ;  they 
loved  him  for  his  charm,  for  that  unique  combination  of  wit  and 
gaiety  with  "  excellent  and  serious  conversation  "  which  made 
him  when  present  "  always  the  centre  from  which  and  to  which 
tended  the  stream  of  the  talk."  Of  all  that  circle  he  was  surely 
most  in  need  of  cheering,  yet  none  of  them  ever  write  of  "  gohig 
to  cheer  Charles  Lamb";  they  went  rather  for  what  he  had 
to  give.  And  his  gaiety  was  not  forced  in  an  attempt  to  seek 
I'elief  froui  the  strain  under  which  he  lived,  —  even  while  he 
found  relief  in  it;  it  was  as  much  a  part  of  him  as  his  senti- 


^ 


INTRODUCTION  XV 


ment.  "  The  most  witty  and  sensible  of  men,"  Hazlitt  called 
him.  Those  who  knew  the  combination  nnderstood  his  jests, 
"  not  quite  irrelevant  in  ears  that  could  understand  "  ;  but  even 
his  friends  were  sometimes  put  to  the  test  by  his  love  of  prac- 
tical joking  in  his  correspondence,  and  in  company  he  had  what 
De  Quincey  pompously  called  "  a  propensity  to  mystify  a 
stranger.'' 

To  quote  examples  of  Lamb's  jokes,  of  his  witty  remarks, 
would  be  an  endless  task,  and  wholly  unsatisfactory  ;  no  one  or 
two  could  serve  as  illustration.  And  even  when  we  read  all 
that  has  been  preserved  and  recorded  of  him,  how^  much  must 
still  be  lost  to  us. 

"  Many  of  Lamb's  witty  and  curious  sayings  have  been  re- 
peated since  his  death,"  writes  Talfourd,  '•  which  are  worthy  to 
be  held  in  undying  remembrance ;  but  they  give  no  idea  of  the 
general  tenor  of  his  conversation,  which  was  far  more  singular 
and  delightful  in  the  traits  which  could  never  be  recalled,  than 
in  the  epigrammatic  terms  which  it  is  possible  to  quote."  And, 
again,  "  Alas !  how  many  even  of  his  own  most  delicate  fancies, 
rich  as  they  are  in  feeling  and  in  wisdom,  will  be  lost  to  those 
who  have  not  present  to  them,  the  sweet  broken  accents,  the 
half-playful,  half-melancholy  smile  of  the  author." 

It  has  been  said  that  the  pictures  we  have  of  Lamb  are  not 
truthful  portraits,  and  in  fact  no  two  are  very  much  alike;  but 
the  descriptions  left  of  him  in  writing  agree  in  bringing  the 
same  face  and  figure  before  us.  AVe  know  that  he  was  ''  frag- 
ile," and  very  small;  he  hears,  he  WTites  to  Manning,  that  the 
Emperor  of  the  French  is  a  small  man,  '^even  less  than  me." 
Barry  Cornwall  tells  lis  :  — 

r"  Lamb  was  always  dressed  in  black.  '  I  take  it,'  he  says,  '  to 
be  the  proper  costume  of  an  author.'  When  this  was  once 
objected  to,  at  a  wedding,  he  pleaded  the  raven's  apology  in  the 
fable,  that  '  he  had  no  other.'  His  clothes  were  entirely  black; 
and  he  wore  long  black  gaiters  up  to  the  knees.  His  head  was 
bent  a  little  forward,  like  one  who  had  been  reading  ;  and,  if 
not  standing  or  walking,  he  generally  had  in  his  hand  an  old 
book,  a  pinch  of  snuif,  or,  later  in  the  evening,  a  pil>e.  He 
stammered  a  little,  pleasantly,  just  enough  to  prevent  liis  mak- 
ing speeches,  just  enough  to  make  you  listen  eagerly  for  his 


XVI  INrRODUCTIOX 

words,  always  full  of  meaning  or  charged  with  a  jest;  or  refer- 
ring (but  this  was  rare)  to  some  line  or  passage  from  one  of  the 
old  Elizabethan  writers,  which  was  always  ushered  in  with  a 
smile  of  tender  reverence.'" 

"Charles  Lamb  had  three  striking  personal  peculiarities,"  so 
jNIary  Cowden  Clarke  describes  him,  the  daughter  of  his  friend, 
the  musician  Xovello,  —  "his  eyes  were  of  different  colours, 
one  being  grayish  blue,  the  other  brownish  hazel;  his  hair  was 
thick,  retaining  its  abundance  and  dark  brown  hue,  with  scarcely 
a  single  gray  hair  among  it,  until  even  the  latest  period  of  his 
life ;  and  he  had  a  smile  of  singular  sweetness  and  beauty." 

Much  has  been  made  of  Lamb's  "  one  fault."  Patting  aside 
all  references  to  this  in  his  letters,  for  in  regard  to  himself  he 
would  err  on  the  side  of  exaggerated  severit}^,  we  may  refer 
again  to  Barry  Cornwall.  "  Much  injustice  has  been  done  to 
Lamb  by  accusing  him  of  excess  in  drinking.  The  truth  is,  that 
a  very  small  quantity  of  any  strong  liquid  .  .  .  disturbed  his 
speech,  which  at  best  was  but  an  eloquent  stammer.  The  dis- 
tresses of  his  early  life  made  him  ready  to  resort  to  any  remedy 
which  brought  forgetf ulness ;  and  he,  himself  frail  in  body  and 
excitable,  was  very  speedily  affected.  During  all  my  intimacy 
with  him,  I  never  knew  him  drink  immoderately  except  once. 
.  .  .  Perhaps  the  pipe  was  the  only  thing  in  which  Lamb 
really  exceeded.  He  was  fond  of  it  from  the  very  early  years 
when  he  was  accustomed  to  smoke  '  Orinooko '  at  the  '  Saluta- 
tion and  Cat'  with  Coleridge,  in  1796.  He  attempted  on  several 
occasions  to  give  it  up,  but  his  struggles  were  overcome  by 
counter  influences.    *  Tobacco,'  he  says, '  stood  in  its  own  light.'  " 

Lamb's  friends  have  been  quoted  throughout  this  account  of 
him;  what  he  was  in  their  eyes  is  very  evident:  what  they 
were  to  him  perhaps  they  themselves  could  not  appreciate. 
Of  his  affection  and  loyalty  they  were  assured,  but,  knowing  his 
strength  to  meet  the  sorrow  life  had  brought  him,  they  may  not 
have  realized  how  dependent  he  was  upon  them.  Certainly  he 
never  made  the  demand  in  words,  —  in  any  appeal  for  sympathy ; 
but  over  and  over  in  his  letters  —  to  Coleridge  at  a  distance,  to 
Manning  in  China  —  he  laments  the  loss  of  their  companion- 
ship, longs  for  the  pleasure  of  their  conversation.  While  among 
his  intimate  friends  were  some  of  the  great  intellects  of  the 


INTRODUCTION-  xvii 

century,  it  was  not  the  intellectual  interest  merely  that  bound 
him  to  them ;  he  wanted  their  affection,  their  society.  Because 
of  his  frail  health  and  the  need  of  rest  in  his  nervous  life,  he 
was  often  irritated  by  interruption,  and  complains  in  his  letters 
of  too  much  company,  of  his  "nocturnal;  i.e.  knock-eternal 
visitors."  But  in  the  very  lines  he  adds  parenthetically,  "God 
bless  'em,  I  love  some  of  'em  dearly."  As  he  could  not  be  happy 
out  of  London,  —  away  from"  the  motley  Strand,"  "the  book- 
stalls," "the  bright  piazzas  of  Covent  Garden,"  "  IMohametan 
Paradises  upon  earth,"  —  so  he  could  not  be  perfectly  happy 
without  human  intercourse,  without  his  friends. 

He  gave  himself  to  them  in  return,  with  joy  in  the  giving. 
He  eagerly  shared  all  his  pleasures,  —  even  those  too  rare  visits 
of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  which  meant  more  to  him  than 
any  others ;  and  his  readiness  to  give  and  lend  out  of  his  small 
worldly  portion  w^as  equalled  by  a  charming  readiness  to  receive, 
—  to  afford  his  friends  the  same  pleasure  which  he  himself  so 
enjoyed. 

"  If  presents  be  not  the  soul  of  friendship,"  he  writes  to 
Wordsw^orth,  "undoubtedly  they  are  the  most  spiritual  part  of 
tlie  body  of  that  intercourse.  There  is  too  much  narrowness 
of  thinking  on  this  point.  The  punctilio  of  acceptance,  me- 
thinks,  is  too  confined  and  strait-laced.  I  could  be  content  to 
receive  money  or  clothes  or  a  joint  of  meat  from  a  friend. 
Why  should  he  not  send  me  a  dinner  as  well  as  a  dessert?  I 
would  taste  him  in  the  beasts  of  the  field,  and  through  all  crea- 
tion. Therefore  did  the  basket  of  fruit  of  the  juvenile  Talfourd 
not  displease  me;  not  that  I  have  any  thoughts  of  bartering 
or  reciprocating  these  things.  To  send  him  anything  in  return 
would  be  to  reflect  suspicion  of  mercenariness  upon  what  I  know 
he  meant  a  freewill  offering.  Let  him  overcome  me  in  bounty. 
In  this  strife  a  generous  nature  loves  to  be  overcome." 

A  hurt  to  a  friend  meant  more  to  Lamb  than  any  pain  to  him- 
self, and  of  this  a  proof  is  furnished  by  the  famous  Epistle  to 
Robert  Southey,  Esquire,  in  the  London  Magazine  for  October, 
1828.  Southey  had  stupidly  made  a  passage  in  one  of  Lamb's 
essays,  On  Witches  and  Other  Night-Fears,  the  text  for  an  attack 
in  the  Quarterly  Review  upon  Leigh  Hunt  as  an  infidel,  and  also 
referred  to  Lamb's  volume,  still  more  stupidly,  if,  as  he  claimed 


XX  INTRODUCTlOy 

liberately,  with  conscious  amusement  in  his  own  delightful 
perversity.  "  I  love  to  anticipate  charges  of  unoriginality," 
he  writes  to  Southey  once  of  some  of  his  own  verse;  "that  line 
is  almost  Shakespeare's." 

So  Elia  abounds  in  echoes,  —  in  suggestions  of  something  we 
have  read  before  somewhere ;  and  the  wider  our  reading  has 
been,  the  greater  will  be  our  pleasure  in  detecting  and  recall- 
ing. "  With  such  allusiveness  as  this,"  says  Canon  Ainger,  "  I 
need  not  say  that  I  have  not  meddled  in  my  notes.  Its  whole 
charm  lies  in  our  recognizing  it  for  ourselves." 

AVe  find  Elia  also  at  times  falling  into  an  effective  archaism  of 
style,  delightful  in  its  quaintness,  in  the  second  paragraph  of 
Poor  Relations,  for  instance,  in  the  opening  of  A  Quakers'  Meeting, 
or  in  parts  of  The  South  Sea-House  and  Oxford  in  the  Vacation. 
In  such  reversion  to  an  older  style,  he  revives  that  ancient  ap- 
peal to  the  reader  which  he  knows  so  well  how  to  employ,  and 
uses  apostroplie  with  special  charm.  Of  this  he  makes  a  digni- 
fied, beautiful  figure  in  the  address  to  Coleridge,  "  the  inspired 
charity-bo3%"  or  to  "  Blakesmoor,"  with  its  "  tattered  and  dimin- 
ished 'scutcheon  " ;  and  by  means  of  it  he  heightens  the  extrava- 
gance of  some  delicious  absurdity, — calling  for  instance  upon 
that  "  mockery  of  a  river  "  which  was  like  to  have  "  extinguished 
forever  "  the  spark  of  George  Dyer's  life,  or  upon  the  "  pleas- 
ant shade  "  of  Robert  "William  Elliston.  Metaphor  is  another 
favourite  figure  with  Lamb,  and  this  too  he  employs  to  its  best 
advantage. 

To  turn  from  style  to  subject-matter:  even  his  reading  — 
the  folios,  his  "  midnight  darlings  "  —  furnished  Lamb  with 
no  more  suggestions  than  the  world  in  which  he  lived.  Places 
he  brings  before  us  with  vivid  distinctness,  and  he  introduces 
us  into  their  very  atmosphere ;  people  he  can  make  no  less  real 
to  us. 

"  His  description  of  John  Tipp,  the  accountant,"  says  Canon 
Ainger,  "  was  enough  to  show  that  not  only  a  keen  observer, 
but  a  master  of  English  was  at  work."  And  beside  the  clerks 
in  the  South-Sea  House  we  may  place  the  no  less  perfect 
sketches  of  the  Old  Benchers  —  foremost  among  them  Samuel 
Salt  —  and  of  Lovel,  his  own  father,  of  his  brother  and  his 
loved  sister,  James  and  Bridget  Elia.     As  regards  the  truth  of 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

one  of  his  sketches  he  writes  to  Bernard  Barton,  his  friend  the 
"  Quaker  poet"  :  "  Why,  that  Joseph  Paice  was  as  real  a  person 
as  eToseph  Hume,  and  a  great  deal  pleasanter.  A  careful  ob- 
server of  life,  Bernard,  has  no  need  to  invent,  nature  romances 
it  for  hirn." 

But  Lamb's  essays  are  characterized  especially  by  his  unex- 
pected introduction  of  opposites,  by  the  suddenness  of  his 
changes.  "  A  sensibility  to  strong  contrasts  was  the  founda- 
tion of  his  humour,"  said  Leigh  Hunt.  "  His  peculiar  mixture 
of  wit  and  fancy  is  to  be  found  there,"  wrote  Henry  Crabb 
Robinson  of  one  of  the  essays,  "in  all  its  charming  individual- 
ity. No  one  knows  better  than  he  the  proportion  of  earnest- 
ness and  gaiety  for  his  indefinable  compositions."  Sometimes 
the  melancholy  dominates  :  "  Hamlet  himself  would  have  recog- 
nized as  in  his  subtlest  vein  the  weird  humourous  sadness,  the 
tragic  jesting  of  Lamb's  remarks  on  death  in  the  essay  on 
New  Year's  Eve,''  says  his  first  publisher,  Edmund  Oilier. 
Again,  all  is  brightness  and  laughter,  as  in  the  Rejoicings  icith 
the  New  Year,  in  the  dainty,  charming  Valentine's  Day,  or  in 
that  exquisite  mock-heroic  Amicus  Redicivus. 

With  Lamb's  earlier  writings,  published  before  he  became 
the  "pride  of  the  London  Magazine,"  with  his  poems  and  plays 
and  with  his  criticisms,  —  in  his  letters  (even  in  those  of  his 
very  early  years),  in  his  other  essays,  and  in  Dramatic  Speci- 
mens, —  with  all  this  we  are  not  concerned  here.  It  is  "  Elia 
the  grave  and  witty "  whom  we  shall  meet  in  these  essays, 
written  between  the  years  1820  and  1833  for  the  magazines, 
—  for  the  London,  the  New  Monthly,  for  Leigh  Hunt's  Indica- 
tor, iov  the  Athenceuni,  and  for  the  short-lived  Englishman's  Maga- 
zine, which  ran  for  only  a  few  months  of  the  year  1831.  The 
name  "Elia,"  which  Lamb  said  should  be  pronounced  "  El'lia,'' 
he  borrowed  at  the  start  from  an  Italian  fellow-clerk  of  his 
early  days  in  the  South-Sea  House,  preferring  not  to  sign  his 
own  name  to  the  first  of  his  essays,  as  his  brother  was  still  in 
the  house  which  he  described.  At  the  close  of  his  Character 
of  Elia  originally  stood  these  lines:  "His  Essays  found  some 
favour  as  they  appeared  separately;  they  shuffled  their  way 
into  the  crowd  well  enough  singly;  how  they  will  read,  now 
they  are   brought   together,  is   a   question   for   the   publishers, 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

who  have  thus  ventured  to  draw  out  into  one  piece  his  '■  weaved- 
up  follies.' "  This  "  one  piece  "  is  the  first  collection,  pub- 
lished in  1823 ;  the  Last  Essays  were  brought  out  in  collected 
form  ten  years  later. 

To  get  at  these  writings  in  the  most  delightful  way  is  to  read 
them  in  the  old  magazines,  to  hunt  for  them  among  the  faded 
pages,  from  which  look  up  at  the  reader  great  names  of  a  past 
century,  —  as  signatures  to  articles  or  poems,  in  dramatic  notices 
and  criticisms,  in  reviews  of  works  '•  just  out,"  which  have  now 
become  classics  on  our  shelves.  We  are  back  among  the  fa- 
mous quarrels  of  those  bygone  great  reviewers,  back  with  what 
Hazlitt  so  vehemently  denounced  as  ''the  malice,  the  lying,  the 
hypocrisy,  the  sleek  adulation,  the  meanness,  equivocation,  and 
skulking  concealment  of  a  Quarterly  Review,  the  reckless  black- 
guardism of  Mr.  Blackwood  "  ;  back  among  the  attack  and  re- 
tort of  Edinburgh  "  Mohocks  "  and  London  "  Cockneys."  Among 
the  jests  too  of  the  London  staff  and  their  friends;  here  is  a 
witty  comment  from  one  of  them  on  Elia's  contribution  last 
month,  —  and  now  follows  Lamb's  dear  inimitable  reply. 
This  method  of  selection  seems  to  bring  Elia  before  us  as  the 
monthly  contributions  brought  him  first  to  the  notice  of  the 
public  and  the  critics ;  we  live  with  him  then  in  truth  in  his 
own  time. 


TEXT 

The  text  of  the  essays  that  follow  is  based  directly  upon  the 
1823  and  the  1833  editions  of  the  Essays,  and  the  Last  Essays 
of  Elia,  and  (with  one  exception,  A  Death-Bed)  upon  the 
text  of  these  as  they  appeared  originally  in  the  magazines.  I 
have  considered  carefully  all  changes  made  in  punctuation, 
capitalization,  and  spelling  by  Canon  Ainger  in  his  edition,  but 
I  have  kept  the  order  of  the  early  volumes,  and  have  omitted 
whatever  Lamb  omitted  there,  occasionally  supplying  in  my 
notes  parts  which  appeared  originally  in  the  magazines.  Any 
one  interested  in  the  original  form  of  the  essays,  who  has  not 
access  to  the  periodicals  themselves,  should  consult  the  notes  to 


INTROD  UCTIOK  xxiii 

Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas's  Edition  of  The  Worl:s  of  Charles  and  Mary 
Lamb,  Vol.  II,  1904:.  In  preparing  my  notes  I  have  referred 
to  Canon  Ainger's  Edition  of  the  essays,  to  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas's,  to 
the  volumes  in  the  Temple  Classics,  edited  by  Mr.  W.  J.  Craig, 
and  to  the  School  Edition  of  Selected  Essays]  edited  by  George 
Armstrong  Wauchope,  190L 

H.  J.  R. 


THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 


THE   SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE  ° 

Reader,  in  thy  passage  from  the  Bank  —  where  thou  hast 
been  receiving  thy  half-yearly  dividends  (supposing  thou  art  a 
lean  annuitant^  like  myself) — to  the  Flower  Pot,  to  secure  a 
place  for  Dalston,  or  Shacklewell,  or  some  other  thy  suburban 
retreat  northerly,  —  didst  thou  never  observe  a  melancholy-  5 
looking,  handsome,  brick  and  stone  edifice,  to  the  left,  where 
Threadneedle-street  abuts  upon  Bishopsgate  ?  I  dare  say  thou 
hast  often  admired  its  magnificent  portals  ever  gaping  wide, 
and  disclosing  to  view  a  grave  court,  with  cloisters  and  pillars, 
with  few  or  no  traces  of  goers-in  or  comers-out  —  a  desolation  10 
something  like  Balclutha's.°  ^ 

This  was  once  a  house  of  trade,  —  a  centre  of  busy  interests. 
The  throng  of  merchants  was  here  —  the  quick  pulse  of  gain  — 
and  here  some  forms  of  business  are  still  kept  up,  though  the 
soul  be  long  since  fled.  Here  are  still  to  be  seen  stately  porti- 15 
coes ;  imposing  staircases  ;  offices  roomy  as  the  state  apartments 
in  palaces — deserted,  or  thinly  peopled  with  a  few  straggling 
clerks ;  the  still  more  sacred  interiors  of  court  and  committee 
rooms,  wdth  venerable  faces  of  beadles,  door-keepers,  —  directors 
seated  in  form  on  solemn  days  (to  proclaim  a  dead  dividend)  20 
at  long  worm-eaten  tables,  that  have  been  mahogany,  witli 
tarnished  gilt-leather  coverings,  supporting  massy  silver  ink- 
stands long  since  dry ;  —  the  oaken  wainscots  hung  with  pictures 
of  deceased  governors  and  sub-governors,  of  Queen  Anne,  and 
the   two   first    monarchs   of    the    Brunswick   dynasty;  —  Imge  25 

1 1  passed  by  the  walls   of  Balclntha,  aiul  they  were  desolate. — 

OSSIAN. 


2  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

charts,  which  subsequent  discoveries  have  antiquated;  —  dusty 
maps  of  Mexico,  dim  as  dreams,  —  and  soundings  of  the  Bay  of 
Panama  !  The  long  passages  hung  with  buckets,  appended,  in 
idle  row,  to  walls,  whose  substance  might  defy  any,  short  of  the 
5  last,  conflagration:  —  with  vast  ranges  of  cellarage  under  all, 
where  dollars  and  pieces  of  eight  once  lay,  an  "  unsunned  heap," 
for  ]Mammon°  to  have  solaced  his  solitary  heart  wuthal,  —  long 
since  dissipated,  or  scattered  into  air  at  the  blast  of  the  break- 
ing of  that  famous  Bubble. ° 

10  Such  is  the  South-Sea  House.  At  least  such  it  was  forty 
years  ago,  when  I  knew  it,  —  a  magnificent  relic  !  What  altera- 
tions may  have  been  made  in  it  since,  I  have  had  no  opportu- 
nities of  verifying.  Time,  I  take  for  granted,  has  not  freshened 
it.     No  wind  has  resuscitated  the  face  of  the  sleeping  waters. 

15  A  thicker  crust  by  this  time  stagnates  upon  it.  The  moths 
that  were  then  battening  upon  its  obsolete  ledgers  and  day- 
books, have  rested  from  their  depredations,  but  other  light 
generations  have  succeeded,  making  fine  fretwork  among  their 
single  and  double  entries.     Layers  of  dust  have  accumulated  (a 

20  superfoetation  of  dirt !)  upon  the  old  layers  that  seldom  used  to 
be  disturbed,  save  by  some  curious  finger,  now  and  then,  in- 
quisitive to  explore  the  mode  of  book-keeping  in  Queen  Anne's 
reign ;  or,  with  less  hallowed  curiosity,  seeking  to  unveil  some 
of  the  mysteries  of  that  tremendous  hoax,  whose  extent  the 

25  petty  peculators  of  our  day  look  back  upon  with  the  same  ex- 
pression of  incredulous  admiration  and  hopeless  ambition  of 
rivalry  as  would  become  the  puny  face  of  modern  conspiracy 
coritemplating  the  Titan°  size  of  Vaux's  superhuman  plot."^ 
Peace  to  the  manes°  of  the  Bubble  !    Silence  and  destitution 

30  are  upon  thy  walls,  proud  house,  for  a  memorial ! 

Situated  as  thou  art,  in  the  very  heart  of  stirring  and  living 
commerce,  —  amid  the  fret  and  fever  of  speculation  —  with  the 
Bank,  and  the  'Change,  and  the  India-house  about  thee,  in  the 
heyday  of  present  prosperity,  with  thek  important  faces,  as  it 

35  were,  insulting  thee,  their  ^joor  neighbour  out  of  business  —  to  the 
idle  and  merely  contemplative, — to  such  as  me,  old  house! 
there  is  a  charm  in  thy  quiet:  —  a  cessation  —  a  coolness  from 
business  —  an  indolence  almost  cloistral — which  is  delightful! 
With  what  reverence  have  I  paced  thy  great  bai-e  rooms  and 


THE  SOUTH-SEA    HOUSE  3 

courts  at  eventide  !  They  spoke  of  the  past :  —  the  shade  of 
some  dead  accountant,  with  visionary  pen  in  ear,  would  flit  by 
me,  stiff  as  in  life.  Living  accounts  and  accountants  puzzle 
me.  I  have  no  skill  in  figuring.  But  thy  great  dead  tomes, 
which  scarce  three  degenerate  clerks  of  the  present  day  could  5 
lift  from  their  enshrining  shelves  —  with  their  old  fantastic 
flourishes  and  decorative  rubric°  interlacings — their  sums  in 
triple  colunmiations,  set  down  with  formal  superfluity  of 
ciphers  —  with  pious  sentences  at  the  beginning,  without 
which  our  religious  ancestors  never  ventured  to  open  a  book  of  10 
business,  or  bill  of  lading  —  the  costly  vellum  covers  of  some  of 
them  almost  persuading  us  that  we  are  got  into  some  letter 
library,  —  are  very  agreeable  and  edifying  spectacles.  I  can  look 
upon  these  defunct  dragons  with  complacency.  Thy  heavy 
odd-shaped  ivory-handled  penknives  (  our  ancestors  had  every- 15 
thing  on  a  larger  scale  than  we  have  hearts  for)  are  as  good  as 
anything  from  Herculaneum.°  The  pounce-boxes°  of  our  days 
have  gone  retrograde. 

The  very  clerks  which  I  remember  in  the  South-Sea  House  — 
I  speak  of  forty  years  back  —  had  an  air  very  different  from  20 
those  in  the  public  oflSces  that  I  have  had  to  do  with  since. 
They  partook  of  the  genius°  of  the  place  ! 

They  were  mostly  (for  the  establishment  did  not  admit  of 
superfluous  salaries)   bachelors.     Generally  (for  they  had  not 
much  to  do)  persons  of  a  curious  and  speculative  turn  of  mind.  25 
Old-fashioned,  for  a  reason  mentioned  before.     Humourist s,° 
for  they  were  of  all  descriptions ;  and,  not  having  been  brought 
together  in  early  life  (which  has  a  tendency  to  assimilate  the 
members  of  corporate  bodies  to  each  other),  but,  for  the  most 
part,  placed  in  this  house  in  ripe  or  middle  age,  they  necessarily  30 
carried  into  it  their  separate  habits  and  oddities,  unqualified,  if 
I  may  so  speak,  as  into  a  common  stock.     Hence  they  formed  a 
sort  of  Noah's  ark.     Odd  fishes.     A  lay-monastery.     Domestic 
retainers  in  a  great  house,  kept  more  for  show  than  use.     Yet 
pleasant  fellows,  full  of  chat  —  and  not  a  few  among  them  had  35 
arrived  at  considerable  proficiency  on  the  German  flute. 

The  cashier  at  that  time  was  one  Evans,°  a  Cambro-Briton.° 
He  had  something  of  the  choleric  complexion  of  his  country- 
men stamped  on  his  visage,  but  was  a  worthy,  sensible  man  at 


4  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

bottom.  He  wore  his  hair,  to  the  last,  powdered  and  frizzed 
out,  in  the  fashion  which  T  remember  to  have  seen  in  caricatures 
of  what  were  termed,  in  my  voung  days,  M(iccaronies°  He  was 
the  last  of  that  race  of  beaux.  Melancholy  as  a  gib-cat  over 
5  his  counter  all  the  forenoon,  I  think  I  see  him  making  up  his 
cash  (as  they  call  it)  with  treuiulous  fingers,  as  if  he  feared  every 
one  about  him  was  a  defaulter ;  in  his  hypochondry,  ready  to 
imagine  himself  one ;  haunted,  at  least,  with  the  idea  of  the 
possibility  of  his  becoming  one :  his  tristful  visage  clearing  up 

10  a  little  over  his  roast  neck  of  veal  at  Anderton's  at  two  (where 
his  picture  still  hangs,  taken  a  little  before  his  death  by  desire 
of  the  master  of  the  coffee-house  which  he  had  frequented  for 
the  last  five  and  twenty  years),  but  not  attaining  the  meridian 
of  its  animation  till  evening  brought  on  the  hour  of  tea  and 

15  visiting.  The  simultaneous  sound  of  his  well-known  rap  at  the 
door  w^th  the  stroke  of  the  clock  announcing  six,  was  a  topic 
of  never-failing  mirth  in  the  families  which  this  dear  old  bache- 
lor gladdened  with  his  presence.  Then  was  \\\s  forte,  his  glori- 
fied hour  !    How  would  he  chirp  and  expand  over  a  mutfin  I    How 

20  would  he  dilate  into  secret  history  !  His  countryman  Pennant" 
himself,  in  particular,  could  not  be  more  eloquent  than  he  in 
relation  to  old  and  new  London  —  the  site  of  old  theatres, 
churches,  streets  gone  to  decay  —  where  Rosamond's  pond 
stood  —  the  Mulberry-gardens  —  and  the  Conduit  in  Cheap, — 

25  with  many  a  pleasant  anecdote,  derived  fi'om  paternal  tradition, 
of  those  grotesque  figures  which  Hogarth^  has  immortalized  in 
his  picture  of  Noon,  —  the  worthy  descendants  of  those  heroic 
confessors,"  who,  flying  to  this  country  from  the  wrath  of  Louis 
the  Fourteenth  and  his  dragoons,  kept  alive  the  flame  of  pure 

30  religion  in  the  sheltering  obscurities  of  Hog-lane  and  the  vicin- 
ity of  the  Se^en  Dials ! 

Deputy,  under  Evans,  was  Thomas  Tame.  He  had  the  air 
and  stoop  of  a  nobleman.  You  would  have  taken  him  for  one, 
had  you  met  him  in  one  of  the  passages  leading  to  Westminster- 

35  hall. °  By  stoop.  I  mean  that  gentle  bending  of  the  body  for- 
M'ards,  which,  in  great  men,  must  be  supposed  to  be  the  effect 
of  an  habitual  condescending  attention  to  the  applications  of 
their  inferiors.  While  he  held  you  in  converse,  you  felt  strained 
to  the  height  in  the  colloquy.     The  conference  over,  you  were 


THE    SOUTH-SEA    HOUSE  5 

at  leisure  to  smile  at  the  comparative  insignificance  of  the  pre- 
tensions which  had  just  awed  you.  His  intellect  ^Yas  of  the 
shallowest  order.  It  did  not  reach  to  a  saw  or  a  proyerb.  His 
mind  was  in  its  original  state  of  white  paper.°  A  sucking  babe 
might  have  posed  him.  What  was  it  then?  Was  he  rich? 5 
Alas,  no  !  Thomas  Tame  was  very  poor.  Both  he  and  his  wife 
looked  outwardly  gentlefolks,  when  I  fear  all  was  not  well  at 
all  times  within.  She  had  a  neat,  meagre  person,  which  it  was 
evident  she  had  not  sinned  in  over-pampering;  but  in  its  veins 
was  noble  blood.  She  traced  her  descent,  by  some  labyrinth  of  10 
relationship,  which  I  never  thoroughly  understood,  —  much  less 
can  explain  with  any  heraldic  certainty  at  this  time  of  day,  —  to 
the  illustrious,  but  unfortunate,  house  of  Derwentwater.  This 
was  the  secret  of  Thomas's  stoop.  This  was  the  thought  —  the 
sentiment  —  the  bright  solitary  star  of  your  lives,  —  ye  mild  15 
and  happy  pair,  —  which  cheered  you  in  the  night  of  intellect, 
and  in  the  obscurity  of  your  station!  This  was  to  you  instead 
of  riches,  instead  of  rank,  instead  of  glittering  attainments : 
and  it  was  w^orth  them  all  together.  You  insulted  none  with 
it ;  but,  while  you  wore  it  as  a  piece  of  defensive  armour  only,  20 
no  insult  likewise  could  reach  you  through  it.  Decus  et  solamen.° 
Of  quite  another  stamp  was  the  then  accountant,  John  Tipp. 
He  neither  pretended  to  high  blood,  nor  in  good  truth  cared 
one  fig  about  the  matter.  He  "  thought  an  accountant  the 
greatest  character  in  the  world,  and  himself  the  greatest  ac-2o 
countant  in  it."  Yet  John  was  not  without  his  hobby.  The 
fiddle  relieved  his  vacant  hours.  He  sang,  certainly,  with  other 
notes  than  to  the  Orphean  lyre.°  He  did,  indeed,  scream  and 
scrape  most  abominably.  His  fine  suite  of  official  rooms  in 
Threadneedle-street,  which,  without  anything  very  substantial  30 
appended  to  them,  were  enough  to  enlarge  a  man's  notions  of 
himself  that  lived  in  them,  (I  know  not  who  is  the  occupier  of 
them  now°),  resounded  fortnightly  to  the  notes  of  a  concert 
of  "  sweet  breasts,"  "  as  our  ancestors  would  have  called  them, 
culled  from  club-rooms,  and  orchestras  —  chorus  singers  —  first  .35 
and  second  violoncellos  —  double  basses  —  and  clarionets,  —  Avho 
ate  his  cold  mutton,  and  drank  his  punch,  and  praised  his  ear. 
He  sate  like  Lord  ]\Iidas°  among  them.  But  at  the  desk  Tipp 
was  quite  another  sort  of  creature.     Thence  all  ideas  that  weie 


6  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

purely  ornamental,  were  banished.  You  could  not  >!"•  lit 
anytlniig  romantic  without  rebuke.  Politics  were  exili^^r' 
A  newspaper  was  thought  too  refined  and  abstractc'l.  r^vi: 
whole  duty  of  man  consisted  in  writing  off  dividend  wair  ^\r.. 
5  The  striking  of  the  annual  balance  in  the  company's  ^cji ; 
(which,  ]>erhaps,  differed  from  the  balance  of  last  year  ii^e,  H 
sum  of  25/.  \s.  (UL)  occupied  his  days  and  nights  for 
previous.  Not  that  Tipp  was  blind  to  the  deadness  ot  / 
(as  they  called  them  in  the  city)  in  his  beloved  hous.-.  ( 

10  not  sigii  for  a  return  of  the  old  stirring  days  when  Smit 
hopes  were  young — (he  was  indeed  equal  to  the  witldiil 
any  the  most  intricate  accounts  of  the  most  flourishing 
pany  in  these  or  those  days): — but  to  a  genuine  aceoui 
the  difference  of  i)roceeds  is  as  nothing.     The  fractional 

15  thing  is  as  dear  to  his  heart  as  the  thousands  which  stanc 
fore  it.     He  is  the  true  actor  who,  whether  his  part  be  a  p 


.aiiio 
'Ice';) 
'lyiot 


irbif 

MllII 

lioii; 


or  a  peasant,  must  act  it  with  like  intensity.     "NVith  Tipp  :  ^i 
was  everything.      His  life  w\as  formal.     'His  actions  see  ^, 

id! 


20  He  made  the  best  executor  in  the  world  :  he  w^as  plagued 
incessant  executorships  accordingly,  which  excited  his  sp 
and  soothed  his  vanity  in  equal  ratios.     He  would  sw^ear 
Tipp  swore)  at  the  little  orphans,  whose  rights  he  would  gi 
with  a  tenacity  like  the  grasp  of   the    dying  hand  that  c 

25  mended  their  interests  to  his  protection.     With  all  this  t    j 
was  about  him  a  sort  of  timidity  (his  few  enemies  used  to 
it  a  worse  name)  —  a  something  which,  in  reverence  to  the  d 
we  will  place,  if  you  please,  a^little  on  this  side  of  the  her 
Nature  certainly  had  l^een  pleased  to  endow  John  Tipp  witf 

:V)  sufficient  measure  of  the  principle  of  self-preservation.  Tli] 
is  a  cowardice  which  we  do  not  despise,  because  it  has  notli 
base  or  treacherous  in  its  elements;  it  betrays  itself,  not  yc 
it  is  mere  temperament;  the  absence  of  the  romantic  and  i 
enteri)rising;    it  sees  a  lion  in  the  way,   and  will   not,  w 

.r>  Fortinbras,^  "greatly  find  quarrel  in  a  straw,"  when  some  si 
posed  honour  is  at  stake.  Tipp  never  mounted  the  box  of 
stage-coach  in  his  life  ;  or  leaned  against  the  rails  of  a  balcon 
or  walked  upon  the  ridge  of  a  parapet ;  or  looked  down  a  pre( 
pice ;  or  let  off  a  gun ;  or  went  upon  a  water-party ;  or  wou'j 


THE    SOUTH-SEA    HOUSE  7 

iliiigly  let  you  go  if  he  could  have  helped  it :  neither  was  it 
corded  of  him,  that  for  lucre,  or  for  intimidation,  he  ever 
rsook  friend  or  principle. 

Whom  next  shall  we  summon  from  the  dusty  dead,°  in 
lom  common  qualities  become  uncommon  ?  Can  I  forget  5 
se,  Henry  Man,  the  wit,  the  polished  man  of  letters,  the 
thor,  of  the  South-Sea  House?  who  never  enteredst  thy  office 
a  morning  or  quittedst  it  in  midday  (what  didst  thou  in  an 
ice?)  without  some  quirk  that  left  a  sting!  Thy  gibes  and 
y  jokes  are  now  extinct,  or  survive  but  in  tw^o  forgotten  vol-  10 
les,  which  1  had  the  good  fortune  to  rescue  from  a  stall  in 
irbican,°  not  three  days  ago,  and  found  thee  terse,  fresh,  epi- 
Fimmatic,  as  alive.  Thy  wdt  is  a  little  gone  by  in  these  fas- 
lious  days — thy  topics  are  staled  by  the  "new-born  gauds°" 
the  time  :  —  but  great  thou  used  to  be  in  Public  Ledgers,  and  ig 
Chronicles,  upon  Chatham,  and  Shelburne,  and  Rockingham, 
d  Howe,  and  Burgoyne,  and  Clinton,  and  the  w^ar  which  ended 
the  tearing  from  Great  Britain  her  rebellious  colonies,  —  and 
jppel,  and  Wilkes,'^  and  Sawbridge,  and  Bull,  and  Dunning, 

d  Pratt,  and  Richmond,  —  and  such  small  politics. 20 

A  little  less  facetious,  and  a  great  deal  more  obstreperous,  was 

\q  rattling,  rattleheaded  Plumer.  He  was  descended,  —  not 
a  right  line.  Reader  (for  his  lineal  pretensions,  like  his  per- 
lal,  favoured  a  little  of  the  sinister  bend)  from  the  Plumers° 
Hertfordshire.  So  tradition  gave  him  out ;  and  certain  25 
nily  features  not  a  little  sanctioned  the  opinion.  Certainly 
I  Walter  Plumer  (his  reputed  author)  had  been  a  rake  in  his 
ys,  and  visited  much  in  Italy,  and  had  seen  the  world.  He 
.s  uncle,  bachelor-uncle,  to  the  fine  old  whig  still  living,  who 
s  represented  the  county  in  so  many  successive  parliaments,  30 
1  has  a  fine  old  mansion  near  Ware.  Walter  flourished  in 
orge  the  Second's  days,  and  was  the  same  who  was  sum- 
med  before   the    House    of   Commons    about  a  business   of 

'  nks,  with  the  old  Duchess  of  ^larlborough.     You  may  read 

\  it  inJohnson\s°  Life  of  Cave.     Cave  came  off  cleverly  in  that  35 
siness.     It  is  certain  our  Plumer  did  nothing  to  discounte- 

'i  nee  the  rumour.  He  rather  seemed  pleased  whenever  it  w'as, 
:h  all  gentleness,  insinuated.  But,  besides  his  family  preten- 
ns,  Plumer  was  an  engaging  fellow,  and  sang  gloriously. 


8  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Not  so  sweeth"  sang  Plumer  as   thou  sangest,    mild,  child- 
like, pastoral  M ;  a  flute's  breathing  less  divinely  whisper- 
ing than   thy  Arcadian"  melodies,  when,  in  tones  worthy  of 
Arden,°  thou  didst  chant  that  song  sung  by  Amiens  to  the  ban- 
5  ished  Duke,  which  proclaims  the  winter  wind  more  lenient  than 

for  a  man  to  be  ungi-ateful.     Thy  sire  was  old  surly  M ,  the 

unapproachable  churchwarden  of  Bishopsgate.  He  knew  not 
what  he  did,  when  he  begat  thee,  like  spring,  gentle  offspring 
of  blustering  winter  :  —  only  unfortunate  in  thy  ending,  which 

10  should  have  been  mild,  conciliatory,  swan-like. 

Much  remains  to  sing.  Many  fantastic  shapes  rise  np,  but 
they  must  be  mine  in  private  :  —  already  I  have  fooled  the 
reader  to  the  top  of  his  bent;  else  could  I  omit  that  strange 
creature  WooUett,  who   existed   in   trying   the   question,   and 

lo  bought  litigations  !  —  and  still  stranger,  inimitable,  solemn  Hep- 
worth,  from  whose  gravity  Xewton°  might  have  deduced  the 
law  of  gravitation.     How  profoundly  would  he  nib°  a  pen  — 

with  what  deliberation  would  he  wet  a  wafer° ! 

But  it  is  time  to  close  —  night's  wheels  are  rattling  fast  over 

20  me  —  it  is  proper  to  have  done  with  this  solemn  mockery. 

Reader,  what  if  I  have  been  playing  ydih.  thee  all  this 
while  —  peradventure  the  very  names,  which  I  have  summoned 
up  before  thee,  are  f antastic°  —  insubstantial  —  like  Henry 
Pimpernel,  and  old  John  Xaps  of  Greece": 

25  Be  satisfied  that  something  answering  to  them  has  had  a 
being.     Their  importance  is  from  the  past. 


OXFORD  IX   THE   VACATIOX 

Casting  a  preparatory  glance  at  the  bottom  of  this  article  — 
as  the  wary  connoisseur  in  prints,  with  cursory  eye  (which, 
while  it  reads,  seems  as  though  it  read  not),  never  fails  to  con- 
30 suit  the  quis  scidpsit°  in  the  corner,  before  he  pronounces  some 
rare  piece  to  be  a  Vivares,  or  a  Woollet  —  methinks  I  hear  you 
exclaim,  Reader,  Who  is  Elia  ? 

Because  in  my  last  I  tried  to  divert  thee  with  some  half-for- 
gotten humours"  of  some  old  clerks  defunct,  in  an  old  house  of 


OXFORD    IX    THE    VACATIOX  9 

business,  long  since  gone  to  decay,  doubtless  you  have  already 
set  me  down  in  your  mind  as  one  of  the  self-same  college  —  a 
votary  of  the  desk  —  a  notched^  and  cropt  scrivener  —  one  that 
sucks  his  sustenance,  as  certain  sick  people  are  said  to  do, 
through  a  quill.  5 

Well,  I  do  agnize°  something  of  the  sort.  I  confess  that  it 
is  my  humour,  my  fancy  —  in  the  fore-part  of  the  day,  when 
the  mind  of  your  man  of  letters  requires  some  relaxation  (and 
none  better  than  such  as  at  first  sight  seems  most  abhorrent 
from  his  beloved  studies) — to  while  away  some  good  hours  10 
of  my  time  in  the  contemplation  of  indigos,  cottons,  raw 
silks,  piece-goods,  flowered  or  otherwise.  In  the  first  place 
*  *  *  and  then  it  sends  you  home  with  such  in- 
creased appetite  to  your  books  ****** 
not  to  say,  that  your  outside  sheets,  and  waste  wrappers  of  fools- 15 
cap,  do  receive  into  them,  most  kindly  and  naturally,  the  impres- 
sion of  sonnets,  epigrams,  essays,  —  so  that  the  very  parings  of 
a  counting-house  are,  in  some  sort,  the  settings  up  of  an  author. 
The  enfranchised  quill  that  has  plodded  all  the  morning  among 
the  cart-rucks  of  figures  and  ciphers,  frisks  and  curvets  so  at  its  20 
ease  over  the  flowery  carpet-ground  of  a  midnight  dissertation. 

—  It  feels  its  promotion.  *  *  *  *  So  that  you 
see,  upon  the  whole,  the  literary  dignity  of  Elia  is  very  little, 
if  at  all,  compromised  in  the  condescension. 

Not  that,  in  my  anxious  detail  of  the  many  commodities  in-  25 
cidental  to  the  life  of  a  public  office,  I  would  be  thought  blind 
to  certain  flaws,  which  a  cunning  carper  might  be  able  to  pick 
in  this  Joseph's  vest.  And  here  I  must  have  leave,  in  the  ful- 
ness of  my  soul,  to  regret  the  abolition,  and  doing-away-with 
altogether,  of  those  consolatory  interstices,  and  sprinklings  of  30 
freedom,  through  the  four  seasons,  —  the  red-letter  days,"  now 
become,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  dead-letter  days.  There  was 
Paul,  and  Stephen,  and  Barnabas  — 

Andrew  and  John,  men  famous  in  old  times 

—  we  were  used  to  ^eep  all  their  days  holy,  as  long  back  as  35 
when  I  was  at  school  at  Christ's."    I  remember  their  effigies,  by 
the  same  token,  in  the  old  Baskett  Prayer  P>ook.°     There  hung 
Peter  in  his  uneasy  posture — holy  Bartleniy  in  the  ti-ouble- 


10  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

some  act  of  flaying,  after  the  famous  jNIarsyas  by  Spagnoletti,^ 

—  I  honoured  them  all,  and  could  almost  have  wept  the  defalca- 
tion of  Iscariot  —  so  much  did  we  love  to  keep  holy  memories 
sacred:  —  only  methought  I  a  little  grudged  at  the  coalition  of 

5  the  better  Jude°  with  Simon  —  clubbing  (as  it  were)  their  sanc- 
tities together,  to  make  up  one  poor  gaudy-day°  between  theui 

—  as  an  economy  unworthy  of  the  dispensation. 

These  were  bright  visitations  in  a  scholar's  and  a  clerk's  life 

—  "  far  off  their  coming  shone."  —  I  was  as  good  as  an  almanac 
10  in  those  days.    I  could  have  told  you  such  a  saint's  day  falls  out 

next  week,  or  the  week  after.  Peradventure  the  Epiphany,°  by 
some  periodical  infelicity,  would,  once  in  six  years,  merge  in  a 
Sabbath.  Xow  am  I  little  better  than  one  of  the  profane.  Let 
me  not  be  thought  to  arraign  the  wisdom  of  my  civil  superiors, 

-5  who  have  judged  the  further  observation  of  these  holy  tides° 
to  be  papistical,  superstitious.  Only  in  a  custom  of  such  long 
standing,  methinks,  if  their  Holinesses  the  Bishops  had,  in 
decency,  been  first  sounded  —  but  1  am  wading  out  of  my 
depths.     I  am  not  the  man  to  decide  the  limits  of  civil  and 

20  ecclesiastical  authority  —  I  am  plain  Elia  —  no  Selden,°  nor 
Archbishop  Usher^  —  though  at  present  in  the  thick  of  their 
books,  here  in  the  heart  of  learning,  under  the  shadow  of  the 
mighty  Bodley.° 

I  can  here  play  the  gentleman,  enact  the  student.    To  such  a 

25  one  as  myself,  w^ho  has  been  defrauded  in  his  young  years  of 
the  sweet  food  of  academic  institution,  nowhere  is  so  pleasant, 
to  while  away  a  few  idle  weeks  at,  as  one  or  other  of  the 
Universities.  Their  vacation,  too,  at  this  time  of  the  year,  falls 
in  so  pat  with  ours.    Here  I  can  take  my  walks  unmolested,  and 

30  fancy  myself  of  what  degree  or  standing  I  please.  I  seem 
admitted  ad  eun/iem°  I  fetch  up  past  opportunities.  I  can  rise 
at  the  chapel-bell,  and  dream  that  it  rings  for  me.  In  moods  of 
humility  I  can  be  a  Sizar,°  or  a  Servitor.^  When  the  peacock 
vein  rises,  I  strut  a  Gentleman  Commoner.^    In  graver  moments, 

35  I  proceed  Master  of  Arts.  Indeed  I  do  not  think  I  am  much 
unlike  that  respectable  character.  I  hav^  seen  your  dim-eyed 
vergers,  and  bed-makers  in  spectacles,  drop  a  bow  or  curtsy,  as 
I  pass,  wisely  mistaking  me  for  something  of  the  sort.  I  go 
about  in  black,  which  favours    the    notion.      Onlv  in  Christ 


OXFORD    IX    THE    VACATIOX  11 

Church   reverencP   quadrangle   I  can   be   content  to  pass  for 
nothing  short  of  a  Seraphic  Doctor." 

The  walks  at  these  times  are  so  much  one's  own, — the  tall 
trees  of  Christ's,  the  groves  of  Magdalen !  The  halls  deserted, 
and  with  open  doors,  inviting  one  to  slip  in  unperceived,  and  5 
pay  a  devoir°  to  some  Founder,  or  noble  or  royal  Benefactress 
(that  should  have  been  ours)  whose  portrait  seems  to  smile 
upon  their  overlooked  beadsman,°  and  to  adopt  me  for  their 
own.  Then,  to  take  a  peep  in  by  the  way  at  the  butteries,  and 
sculleries,  redolent  of  antique  hospitality :  the  immense  caves  10 
of  kitchens,  kitchen  fireplaces,  cordial  recesses;  ovens  whose 
first  pies  were  baked  four  centuries  ago ;  and  spits  which  have 
cooked  for  Chaucer  !  Not  the  meanest  minister  among  the 
dishes  but  is  hallowed  to  me  through  his  imagination,  and  the 
Cook  goes  forth  a  Manciple.^  15 

Antiquity!  thou  wondrous  charm,  what  art  thou?  that,  being 
nothing,  art  everything !  When  thou  wert,  thou  wert  not 
antiquity  —  then  thou  wert  nothing,  but  hadst  a  remoter 
antiquity,  as  thou  called'st  it,  to  look  back  to  with  blind  venera- 
tion ;  thou  thyself  being  to  thyself  flat,  jejune,  modern  !  AYhat  20 
mystery  lurks  in  this  retroversion?  or  what  half  Januses°i  are 
we,  that  cannot  look  forward  with  the  same  idolatry  with  which 
we  for  ever  revert !  The  mighty  future  is  as  nothing,  being 
everything  !  the  past  is  everything,  being  nothing  ! 

What  were  thy  dark  ages  ?  Surely  the  sun  rose  as  brightly  25 
then  as  now,  and  man  got  him  to  his  work  in  the  morning. 
AVhy  is  it  that  we  can  never  hear  mention  of  them  without  an 
accompanying  feeling,  as  though  a  palpable  obscure  had  dimmed 
the  face  of  things,  and  that  our  ancestors  wandered  to  and  fro 
groping !  30 

Above  all  thy  rarities,  old  Oxenford,°  what  do  most  arride° 
and  solace  me,  are  thy  repositories  of  mouldering  learning,  thy 
shelves 

AVhat  a  place  to  be  in  is  an  old  library !     It  seems  as  though 
all  the  souls  of    all  the  writers,  that  have   bequeathed  their  35 
labours  to  these  Bodleians,  were  reposing  here,  as  in  some  dor- 
mitory, or  middle  state.     I  do  not  want  to  handle,  to  profane 

1  Januses  of  one  face.  —  Sir  Thomas  Buowne.° 


12  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

the  leaves,  their  winding-sheets.  I  could  as  soon  dislodge  a 
shade.  I  seem  to  inhale  learning,  walking  amid  their  foliage  ; 
and  the  odour  of  their  old  moth-scented  coverings  is  fragrant  as 
the  first  bloom  of  those  sciential^  apples  which  grew  amid  the 
5  happy  orchard. 

Still  less  have  I  cariosity  to  disturb  the  elder  repose  of  ]\ISS. 
Those  varicE  lectiones°  so  tempting  to  the  more  erudite  palates, 
do  but  disturb  and  unsettle  my  faith.  I  am  no  Hercuhmean 
raker.     The  credit  of  the  three  witnesses°  might  have  slept  uu- 

10  impeached  for  me.  I  leave  these  curiosities  to  Porson,°  and  to 
G.  D.° — whom,  by  the  way,  I  found  busy  as  a  moth  over  some 
rotten  archive,  rummaged  out  of  some  seldom-explored  press,  in 
a  nook  at  Oriel. °  With  long  poring,  he  is  grown  almost  into  a 
book.    He  stood  as  passive  as  one  by  the  side  of  the  old  shelves. 

15  I  longed  to  new-coat  him  in  Russia,  and  assign  him  his  place. 
He  might  have  mustered  for  a  tall  Scapula.° 

D.  is  assiduous  in  his  visits  to  these  seats  of  learning.  Xo 
inconsiderable  portion  of  his  moderate  fortune,  I  apprehend, 
is  consumed  in  journeys  between    them  and    Clifford's-inn  — 

20  where,  like  a  dove  on  the  asp's  nest,  he  has  long  taken  up  his 
unconscious  abode,  amid  an  incongruous  assembly  of  attorneys, 
attorneys'  clerks,  a]3paritors,  promoters,  vermin  of  the  law, 
among  whom  he  sits,  "  in  calm  and  sinless  peace."  The  fangs 
of  the  law  pierce  him  not  —  the  winds  of  litigation  blow  over 

25  his  humble  chambers  —  the  hard  sheriff's  officer  moves  his  hat 
as  he  passes  —  legal  nor  illegal  discourtesy  touches  him  — none 
thinks  of  offering  violence  or  injustice  to  him  — you  would  as 
soon  "  strike  an  abstract  idea." 

D.  has  been  engaged,  he  tells  me,  through  a  course  of  labo- 

30  rious  years,  in  an  investigation  into  all  curious  matter  con- 
nected with  the  two  Universities ;  and  has  lately  lit  upon  a 

MS.  collection  of  charters,  relative  to  C .  by  which  he  hopes 

to  settle  some  disputed  points  —  particularly  that  long  contro- 
versy between  them  as  to  priority  of  foundation.     The  ardour 

35  with  which  he  engages  in  these  liberal  pursuits,  I  am  afraid, 
has  not  met  with  all  the  encouragement  it  deserved,  either  here, 

or  at   C .     Your   caputs,  and  heads  of  colleges,  care  less 

than  anybody  else  about  these  questions.  —  Contented  to  suck 
the  milky  fountains  of  their  Alma  ^Maters,  without  inquiring 


OXFORD    IN    THE    VACATION  13 

into  the  venerable  gentlewomen's  years,  they  rather  hold  such 
curiosities  to  be  impertinent  —  unreverend.  They  have  their 
good  glebe  lauds  in  manu,  and  care  not  much  to  rake  into  the 
title-deeds.  I  gather  at  least  so  much  from  other  sources,  for 
D.  is  not  a  man  to  complain.  5 

D.  started  like  an  unbroke  heifer,  when  I  interrupted  him. 
A  priori  it  was  not  very  probable  that  we  should  have  met  in 
Oriel.  But  D.  would  have  done  the  same,  had  I  accosted  him 
on  the  sudden  in  his  own  walks  in  Clifford's-inn,  or  in  the. 
Temple.  In  addition  to  a  provoking  short-sightedness  (the  10 
effect  of  late  studies  and  watchings  at  the  midnight  oil)  D.  is 
the  most  absent  of  men.  He  made  a  call  the  other  morning  at 
our  friend  M.'s°  in  Bedford- square  ;  and,  finding  nobody  at 
home,  was  ushered  into  the  hall,  where,  asking  for  pen  and  ink, 
with  great  exactitude  of  purj^ose  he  enters  me  his  name  in  the  15 
book  — which  ordinarily  lies  about  in  such  places,  to  record  the 
failures  of  the  untimely  or  unfortunate  visitor  —  and  takes  his 
leave  with  many  ceremonies,  and  professions  of  regret.  Some 
two  or  three  hours  after,  his  Avalking  destinies  returned  him  into 
the  same  neighbourhood  again,  and  again  the  quiet  image  of  20 
the  fireside  circle  at  M.'s  —  Mrs.  M.  presiding  at  it  like  a  Queen 
Lar,°  with  pretty  A.  S.  at  her  side  —  striking  irresistibly  on  his 
fancy,  he  makes  another  call  (forgetting  that  they  were  "  cer- 
tainly not  to  return  from  the  country  before  that  day  week"), 
and  disappointed  a  second  time,  inquires  for  pen  and  paper  as  25 
before  :  again  the  book  is  brought,  and  in  the  line  just  above 
that  in  which  he  is  about  to  print  his  second  name  (his  re- 
script) — his  first  name  (scarce  dry)  looks  out  upon  him  like 
another  Sosia,°  or  as  if  a  man  should  suddenly  encounter  his 
own  duplicate  !  —  The  effect  may  be  conceived.  D.  made  many  30 
a  good  resolution  against  any  such  lapses  in  future.  I  hope  he 
will  not  keep  them  too  rigorously. 

For  with  G.  D.  —  to  be  absent  from  the  body,  is  sometimes 
(not  to  speak  it  profanely)  to  be  present  with  the  Lord.  At 
the  very  time  when,  personally  encountering  thee,  he  passes  on  35 
with  no  recognition or,  being  stopped,  starts  like  a  thing- 
surprised —  at  that  moment,  Reader,  he  is  on  Mount  Tabor  — 
or  Parnassus°  —  or  co-sphered  with  Plato° —  or,  M'ith  Ilarring- 
ton,°   framing    "immortal  commonwealths  "-^devising   some 


14  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

plan  of  amelioration  to  thy  country,  or  thy  species perad- 

venture  meditating  some  individual  kindness  or  courtesy,  to  be 
done  to  thee  thyself]  the  returning  consciousness  of  which  made 
him  to  start  so  guiltily  at  thy  obtruded  personal  j)resence. 
5  D.  is  delightful  anywhere,  but  he  is  at  the  best  in  such 
places  as  these.  He  cares  not  much  for  Bath.  He  is  out  of 
his  element  at  Buxton,  at  Scarborough,  or  Harrowgate.  The 
Cam°  and  the  Isis°  are  to  him  "  better  than  all  the  waters  of 
Damascus. ° "  On  the  Muses'  hill°  he  is  happy,  and  good,  as 
10  one  of  the  Shepherds  on  the  Delectable  ]\lountains°  ;  and  when 
he  goes  about  with  you  to  show  you  the  halls  and  colleges,  you 
think  you  have  with  you  the  Interpreter  at  the  House  Beauti- 
ful.° 


CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL 

FIVE    AND    THIRTY   YEARS    AGO 

Ix  Mr.  Lamb's  "  AVorks,°  "  published  a  year  or  two  since,  I 

15  find  a  magnificent  eulogy  on  my  old  school,^  such  as  it  was,  or 
now  appears  to  him  to  have  been,  between  the  years  1782  and 
1769.  It  happens,  very  oddly,  that  my  own  stancling  at  Christ's 
was  neai'ly  corresponding  with  his ;  and,  with  all  gratitude  to 
him  for  his  enthusi;ism  for  the  cloisters,  I  think  he  has  con- 

20  trived  to  bring  together  whatever  can  be  said  in  praise  of  them, 
dropping  all  the  other  side  of  the  argument  most  ingeniously. 
I  remember  L.  at  school ;  and  can  well  recollect  that  he  had 
some  peculiar  advantages,  which  I  and  others  of  his  school- 
fellows had  not.     His  friends  lived  in  town,  and  were  near  at 

25 hand;  and  he  had  the  privilege  of  going  to  see  them,  almost  as 
often  as  he  wished,  through  some  invidious  distinction,  which 
was  denied  to  us.  The  present  worthy  sub-treasurer  to  the 
Inner  Temple  can  explain  how  that  happened.  He  had  liLs  tea 
and  hot  rolls  in  a  morning,  while  we  were  battening  upon  our 

30  quarter  of  a  penny  loaf  —  our  crug  —  moistened  with  attenuated 

1  Recollections  of  Christ's  Hospital. 


CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL  15 

small  beer,  in  wooden  piggins,  smacking  of  the  pitched  leathern 
jack  it  was  poured  from.  Our  Monday's  milk  porritch,  blue 
and  tasteless,  and  the  pease  soup  of  Saturday,  coarse  and  chok- 
ing, were  enriched  for  him  with  a  slice  of  "extraordinary  bread 
and  butter,"  from  the  hot-loaf  of  the  Temple.  The  Wednesday's  5 
mess  of  millet,  somewhat  less  repugnant —  (we  had  three  ban- 
yan°  to  four  meat  days  in  the  week) — was  endeared  to  his 
j)alate  wdth  a  lump  of  double-refined,  and  a  smack  of  ginger  (to 
make  it  go  down  the  more  glibly)  or  the  fragrant  cinnamon. 
In  lieu  of  our  half-pickled  Sundays,  or  quite  fresh  boiled  beef  l(j 
on  Thursdays  (strong  as  caro  eqiiina°),  with  detestable  marigolds 
floating  in  the  pail  to  poison  the  broth  —  our  scanty  mutton 
scrags  on  Fridays — and  rather  more  savoury,  but  grudging, 
portions  of  the  same  flesh,  rotten-roasted  or  rare,  on  the  Tues- 
days (the  only  dish  which  excited  our  appetites,  and  disap-lj 
pointed  our  stomachs,  in  almost  equal  proportion)  — he  had  his 
hot  plate  of  roast  veal,  or  the  more  tempting  griskin  (exotics 
unknown  to  our  palates),  cooked  in  the  paternal  kitchen  (a 
great  thing),  and  brought  him  daily  by  his  maid  or  aunt!  I 
remember  the  good  old  relative°  (in  whom  love  forbade  pride)  20 
squatting  down  upon  some  odd  stone  in  a  by-nook  of  the  clois- 
ters, disclosing  the  viands  (of  higher  regale°  than  those  cates° 
which  the  ravens  ministered  to  the  Tishbite°)  ;  and  the  con- 
tending passions  of  L.  at  the  unfolding.  There  was  love  for 
the  bringer ;  shame  for  the  thing  brought,  and  the  manner  of  25 
its  bringing;  sympathy  for  those  who  were  too  many  to  share 
in  it ;  and,  at  top  of  all,  hunger  (eldest,  strongest  of  the  pas- 
sions !)  predominant,  breaking  down  the  stony  fences  of  shame, 
and  awkwardness,  and  a  troubling  over-consciousness. 

I  was  a  poor  friendless  boy.°  My  parents,  and  those  who  ?>0 
should  care  for  me,  were  far  away.  Those  few  acquaintances 
of  theirs,  which  they  could  reckon  upon  being  kind  to  me  in 
the  great  city,  after  a  little  forced  notice,  which  they  had  the 
grace  to  take  of  me  on  my  first  arrival  in  town,  soon  grew  tired 
of  my  holiday  visits.  They  seemed  to  them  to  recur  too  often,  35 
though  I  thought  them  few  enough  ;  and,  one  after  another, 
they  all  failed  me,  and  I  felt  myself  alone  among  six  hundred 
playmates. 

O  the  cruelty  of  separating  a  poor  lad  from  his  early  home- 


16  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

stead  !  The  yearniugs  which  I  used  to  have  towards  it  in  those 
unfledged  years!  How,  in  ray  dreams,  would  ray  native  town 
(far  in  the  west)  corae  back,  with  its  church,  and  trees,  and 
faces!  How  I  would  wake  weepinsf.  and  in  the  anguish  of  ray 
5  heart  exclaim  upon  sweet  Calne  in  Wiltshire^ ! 

To  this  late  hour  of  ray  life,  I  trace  impressions  left  by  the 
recollection  of  those  friendless  holidays.  The  long  warm  days 
of  summer  nev^er  return  but  they  bring  with  them  a  gloom  from 
the  haunting  memory  of  those  whole-druj  leaves,  when,  by  some 

10  strange  arrangement,  we  were  turned  out,  for  the  livelong  day, 
upon  our  own  hands,  whether  we  had  friends  to  go  to,  or  none. 
I  remeraber  those  bathing-excursions  to  the  New  River,  which 
L.  recalls  with  such  relish,  better,  I  think,  than  he  can — for  he 
was  a  home-seeking  lad,  and  did  not  much  care  for  such  water- 

15  pastimes  :  —  How  merrily  we  would  sally  forth  into  the  fields  ; 
and  strip  under  the  first  warmth  of  the  sun;  and  wanton  like 
young  dace  in  the  streams ;  getting  us  appetites  for  noon,  which 
those  of  us  that  were  penniless  (our  scanty  morning  crust  long 
since  exhausted)  had  not  the  means  of  allaying  —  while  the 

20  cattle,  and  the  birds,  and  the  fishes,  were  at  feed  about  us,  and 
we  had  nothing  to  satisfy  our  cravings  —  the  very  beauty  of  the 
day,  and  the  exercise  of  the  pastime,  and  the  sense  of  liberty, 
setting  a  keener  edge  upon  them  !  —  How  faint  and  languid, 
finally,  we  would  return,  towards  night-fall,  to  our  desired  raor- 

25  sel,  half-rejoicing,  half-reluctant,  that  the  hours  of  our  uneasy 
liberty  had  expired  ! 

It  was  worse  in  the  days  of  winter,  to  go  prowling  about  the 
streets  objectless — ^^  shivering  at  cold  windows  of  print-shops,  to 
extract  a  little  amuseraent ;  or  haply,  as  a  last  resort,  in  the 

30  hope  of  a  little  novelty,  to  pay  a  fifty-times  repeated  visit  (where 
our  individual  faces  should  be  as  well  known  to  the  warden  as 
those  of  his  own  charges)  to  the  Lions  in  the  Tower  —  to  whose 
levee,  by  courtesy  immemorial,  we  had  a  prescriptive  title  to 
admission. 

35  L.'s  governor"  (so  we  called  the  patron  who  presented  us  to 
the  foundation)  lived  in  a  manner  under  his  paternal  roof. 
Any  complaint  which  he  had  to  make  was  sure  of  being  at- 
tended to.  This  was  understood  at  Christ's,  and  was  an  effec- 
tual screen  to  him  against  the  severity  of  masters,  or  worse 


CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL  17 

tyranny  of  the  monitors.  The  oppressions  of  these  young  brutes 
are  heart-sickening  to  call  to  recollection.  I  have  been  called 
out  of  my  bed,  and  leaked  for  the  purpose,  in  the  coldest  winter 
nights  —  and  this  not  once,  but  night  after  night  —  in  my  shirt, 
to  receive  the  discipline  of  a  leathern  thong,  with  eleven  other  5 
sufferers,  because  it  pleased  my  callow  overseer,  when  there  has 
been  kny  talking  heard  after  we  were  gone  to  bed,  to  make  the 
six  last  beds  in  the  dormitory,  where  the  youngest  children  of 
us  slept,  answerable  for  an  offence  they  neither  dared  to  com- 
mit, nor  had  the  power  to  hinder.  —  The  same  execrable  tyr- 10 
anny  drove  the  younger  part  of  us  from  the  fires,  when  our 
feet  were  perishing  with  snow  ;  and,  under  the  cruellest  penal- 
ties, forbade  the  indulgence  of  a  drink  of  water,  when  we  lay 
in  sleepless  summer  nights,  fevered  with  the  season,  and  the 
day's  sports.  15 

There  was  one  H ,  who,  I  learned  in  after  days,  was  seen 

expiating  some  maturer  offence  in   the  hulks.     (Do  I  flatter 
myself  in  fancying  that  this  might  be  the  planter  of  that  name, 
who  suffered  —  at   Xevis,  I    think,   or   St.    Kitts, — some   few 
years  since  ?     My  friend  Tobin  was  the  benevolent  instrument  20 
of  bringing  him  to  the  gallows.)       This  petty  Nero°  actually 
branded  a  boy,  who  had  offended  him,  with  a  red-hot  iron  ;  and 
nearly  starved  forty  of  us,  with  exacting  contributions,  to  the 
one  half  of  our  bread,  to  pamper  a  young  ass,  which,  incredible 
as  it  may  seem,  with  the  connivance  of  the  nurse's  daughter  (a  25 
young  flame  of  his)  he  had  contrived  to  smuggle  in,  and  keep 
upon  the  leads  of  the  ward,  as  they  called  our  dormitories. 
This  game  went  on  for  better  than  a  week,  till  the  foolish  beast, 
not  able  to  fare  well  but  he  must  cry  roast  meat  —  happier  than 
Caligula's  minion,°  could  he  have  kept  his  own  counsel  —  but,  30 
foolisher,  alas!  than  any  of  his  species  in  the  fables  —  waxing 
fat,  and  kicking,^  in  the  fulness  of  bread,  one  unlucky  minute 
would  needs  proclaim  his  good  fortune  to  the  world  below ;  and, 
laying  out  his  simple  throat,  blew  such  a  ram's  horn  blast,  as 
(toppling  down  the  walls  of  his  own  Jericho)°  set  concealment  35 
any  longer  at  defiance.     The  client  was  dismissed,  with  certain 
attentions,  to   Smithfield ;    but    I   never  understood   that  the 
patron  underwent  any  censure  on  the  occasion.     This  was  in 
the  stewardship  of  L.'s  admired  IVrry. 
c 


18  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

Under  the  same  facile  administration,  can  L.  have  forgotten  the 
cool  impunity  with  which  the  nurses  used  to  carry  away  openly, 
in  open  platters,  for  their  own  tables,  one  out  of  two  of  every 
hot  joint,  which  the  careful  matix)u  had  been  seeing  scrupu- 
5  lously  weighed  out  for  our  dinners?  These  things  were  daily 
practised  in  that  magnificent  apartment,  wliich  L.  (grown  con- 
noisseur since,  we  presume)  praises  so  highly  for  the  grand 
paintings  "by  Verrio  and  others,"  with  which  it  is  "hung 
round  and  adorned."  But  the  sight  of  sleek  well-fed  blue-coat 
10  boys  in  pictures  was,  at  that  time,  I  believe,  little  consolatory 
to  him,  or  us,  the  living  ones,  who  saw  the  better  part  of  our 
provisions  carried  away  before  our  faces  by  harpies°  ;  and  our- 
selves reduced  (with  the  Trojan  in  the  hall  of  Dido)*^ 

To  feed  our  mind  with  idle  portraiture. 

15  L.  has  recorded  the  repugnance  of  the  school  to  gags,  or  the 
fat  of  fresh  beef  boiled;  and  sets  it  down  to  some  superstition. 
But  these  unctuous  morsels  are  never  grateful  to  young  palates 
(children  are  universally  fat-haters)  and  in  strong,  coarse,  boiled 
meats,   unsalted,  are  detestable.     A  gag-eater  in  our  time  was 

20  equivalent  to  a  goid,  and  held  in  equal  detestation.  suf- 
fered under  the  imputation : 

....  'Twas  said 
He  ate  strange  flesh. 

He  was  observed,  after  dinner,  carefully  to  gather  up  the  rem- 
2onants  left  at  his  table  (not  many,  nor  very  choice  fragments, 
you  may  credit  me)  —  and,  in  an  especial  manner,  these  disrepu- 
table morsel's,  which  he  would  convey  away,  and  secretly  stow 
in  the  settle  that  stood  at  his  bedside.     Xone  saw  when  he  ate 
them.     It  was  rumoured  that  he  privately  devoured  them  in  the 
30  night.     He  was  watched,  but  no  traces  of  such  midnight  prac- 
tices were  discoverable.     Some  reported,  that,  on  leave-days,  he 
had  been  seen  to  carry  out  of  the  bounds  a  large  blue  check 
handkerchief,  full  of  something.      This  then  must  be  the  ac- 
cursed thing.    Conjecture  next  was  at  work  to  imagine  how  he 
35  could  dispose  of  it.     Some  said  he  sold  it  to  the  beggars.     This 
belief   generally  prevailed.      He   went  about   moping.      None 


CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL  19 

spake  to  him.  Xo  one  would  play  with  him.  He  was  excom- 
municated ;  put  out  of  the  pale  of  the  school.  He  was  too 
powerful  a  boy  to  be  beaten,  but  he  underwent  every  mode  of 
that  negative  punishment,  which  is  more  grievous  than  many 
stripes.  Still  he  j^ersevered.'  At  length  he  was  observed  by  two  5 
of  his  schoolfellows,  who  were  determined  to  get  at  the  secret, 
and  had  traced  him  one  leave-day  for  that  purpose,  to  enter  a 
large  worn-out  building,  such  as  there  exist  specimens  of  in 
Chancery-lane,  which  are  let  out  to  various  scales  of  pauperism, 
with  open  door,  and  a  common  staircase.  After  him  they  10 
silently  slunk  in,  and  followed  by  stealth  up  four  flights,  and 
saw  him  tap  at  a  poor  wicket,  which  was  opened  by  an  aged 
woman,  meanly  clad.  Suspicion  was  now  ripened  into  certainty. 
The  informers  had  secured  their  victim.  They  had  him  in 
their  toils.  Accusation  was  formally  preferred,  and  retribution  15 
most  signal  M'as  looked  for.  IMr.  Hathaway,  the  then  steward 
(for  this  happened  a  little  after  my  time),  with  that  patient 
sagacity  which  tempered  all  his  conduct,  determined  to  inves- 
tigate the  matter,  before  he  proceeded  to  sentence.  The  result 
was.  that  the  supposed  mendicants,  the  receivers  or  purchasers  20 

of  the  mysterious  scraps,  turned  out  to  be  the  parents  of , 

an  honest  couple  come  to  decay,  —  whom  this  seasonable  supply 
had,  in  all  probability,  saved  from  mendicancy:  and  that  this 
young  stork,  at  the  expense  of  his  own  good  name,  had  all  this 
while  been  only  feeding  the  old  birds !  —  The   governors  on  25 
this  occasion,  much  to  their  honour,  voted  a  present  relief  to 

the  family  of ,  and  presented  him  with  a  silver  medal.    The 

lesson  which  the  steward  read  upon  rash  .judgment,  on  the 

occasion  of  publicly  delivering    the  medal  to  ,  I  believe, 

would  not  be  lost  upon  his  auditory.  —  I  had  left  school  then,  30 

but  I  well  remember .     He  was  a  tall,  shambling  youth, 

with  a  cast  in  his  eye,  not  at  all  calculated  to  conciliate  hostile 
prejudices.  I  have  since  seen  him  carrying  a  baker's  basket. 
[  think  I  heard  he  did  not  do  quite  so  well  by  himself  as  he  had 
done  by  the  old  folks.  35 

I  was  a  hypochondriac  lad  ;  and  the  sight  of  a  boy  in  fetters, 
upon  the  day  of  my  first  putting  on  the  blue  clothes,  was  not 
exactly  fitted  to  assuage  the  natural  terrors  of  initiation.  I  was 
of  tender  years,  barely  turned  of  seven;  and  had  only  read  of 


20  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

such  things  in  books,  or  seen  thera  but  in  dreams.  I  was  told 
he  had  run  away.  This  was  the  punishment  for  the  first  oifence. 
—  As  a  novice  I  was  soon  after  taken  to  see  the  dungeons. 
These  were  little,  square.  Bedlam  cells,  where  a  boy  could  just 
5  lie  at  his  length  upon  straw  and  a  blanket  —  a  mattress,  I  think, 
w^as  afterwards  substituted  —  with  a  peej)  of  light,  let  in  askance, 
from  a  prison-orifice  at  top,  barely  enough  to  read  by.  Here 
the  poor  boy  was  locked  in  by  himself  all  day,  wdthout  sight  of 
any  but  the  porter  who  brought  him  his  bread  and  water  — 

10  who  might  not  speak  to  him;  —  or  of  the  beadle,  who  came  twice 
a  wxek  to  call  him  out  to  receive  his  periodical  chastisement, 
which  was  almost  welcome,  because  it  separated  him  for  a  brief 
interval  from  solitude:  —  and  here  he  was  shut  up  by  himself 
of  nights,  out  of  the  reach  of  an}-  sound,  to  suffer  whatever  hor- 

15  rors  the  weak  nerves,  and  superstition  incident  to  his  time  of 
life,  might  subject  him  to.^  This  was  the  penalty  for  the 
second  offence.  Wouldst  thou  like,  Reader,  to  see  what  be- 
came of  him  in  the  next  degree  ? 

The  culprit,  who  had   been  a   third  time  an  offender,  and 

20  whose  expulsion  w^as  at  this  time  deemed  irreversible,  was 
brought  forth,  as  at  some  solemn  auto-da-fe  °  arrayed  in  uncouth 
and  most  appalling  attire  ;  all  trace  of  his  late  "  w^atchet-weeds^  " 
carefully  effaced,  he  was  exposed  in  a  jacket,  resembling  those 
wdiich  London  lamplighters  formerly  delighted  in,  with  a  cap 

25  of  the  same.  The  effect  of  this  divestiture  was  such  as  the 
ingenious  devisers  of  it  could  have  anticipated.  With  his  pale 
and  frighted  features,  it  was  as  if  some  of  those  disfigurements 
in  Dante°  had  seized  upon  him.  In  this  disguisement  he  was 
brought  into  the  hall  (L.'sfarourite  state-room),  where  awaited 

30  him  the  whole  number  of  his  schoolfellows,  whose  joint  lessons 
and  sports  he  was  thenceforth  to  share  no  more ;  the  awful 
presence  of  the  steward,  to  be  seen  for  the  last  time :  of  the 
executioner  beadle,  clad  in  his  state  robe  for  the  occasion ;  and 

1  One  or  two  instances  of  lunacy,  or  attempted  suicide,  accordingly, 
at  length  convinced  the  governors  of  the  impolicy  of  this  part  of  the 
sentence,  and  the  midnight  torture  to  the  spirits  was  dispensed  with.  — 
This  fancy  of  dungeons  for  children  was  a  sprout  of  Howard's  brain  ; 
for  which  (saving  the  reverence  due  to  Holy  Paul)  methinks  I  could 
willingly  spit  upon  his  statue. 


CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL  21 

of  two  faces  more,  of  direr  import,  because  never  but  in  these 
extremities  visible.  These  were  governors ;  two  of  w-hom,  by 
ohoice,  or  charter,  were  always  accustomed  to  officiate  at  these 
Ultima  Supplicirf ;  not  to  mitigate  (so  at  least  we  understood 
it),  but  to  enforce  the  uttermost  stripe.  Old  Bamber  Gascoigne,  5 
and  Peter  Aubert,  I  remember,  were  colleagues  on  one  occasion, 
when  the  beadle  turning  rather  pale,  a  glass  of  brandy  was 
ordered  to  prepare  him  for  the  mysteries.  The  scourging  was, 
after  the  old  Roman  fashion,  long  and  stately.  The  lictor 
accompanied  the  criminal  quite  round  the  hall.  We  were  gen- 10 
erally  too  faint  with  attending  to  the  previous  disgusting  cir- 
cumstances, to  make  accurate  report  with  our  eyes  of  the  degree 
of  corporal  suffering  inflicted.  Eeport,  of  course,  gave  out  the 
back  knotty  and  livid.  After  scourging,  he  was  made  over,  in 
his  San  Benito  °  to  his  friends,  if  he  had  any  (but  commonly  15 
such  poor  runagates  w^ere  friendless),  or  to  his  parish  officer, 
who,  to  enhance  the  effect  of  the  scene,  had  his  station  allotted 
to  him  on  the  outside  of  the  hall  gate. 

These  solemn  pageantries  were  not  played  off  so  often  as  to 
spoil  the  general  mirth  of  the  community.  We  had  plenty  of  20 
exercise  and  recreation  after  school  hours;  and,  for  myself,  I 
must  confess,  that  I  w^as  never  happier  than  in  them.  The 
Upper  and  the  Lower  Grammar  Schools  were  held  in  the  same 
room  ;  and  an  imaginary  line  only  divided  their  bounds.  Their 
character  was  as  different  as  that  of  the  inhabitants  on  the  tw"o  25 
sides  of  the  Pyrenees.  The  Rev.  James  Boyer°  was  the  Upper 
Master,  but  the  Rev.  Matthew  Field  presided  over  that  portion 
of  the  apartment,  of  which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  a  mem- 
ber. We  lived  a  life  as  careless  as  birds.  We  talked  and  did 
just  what  we  pleased,  and  nobody  molested  us.  We  carried  an  30 
accidence,  or  a  grammar,  for  form ;  but,  for  any  trouble  it  gave 
us,  we  might  take  two  years  in  getting  through  the  verbs  depo- 
nent, and  another  two  in  forgetting  all  that  we  had  learned 
about  them.  There  was  now  and  then  the  formality  of  saying 
a  lesson,  but  if  you  had  not  learned  it,  a  brush  across  the  shoul-35 
ders  (just  enough  to  disturb  a  fly)  was  the  sole  remonstrance. 
Field  never  used  the  rod ;  and  in  truth  he  wielded  the  cane 
with  no  great  goodwill  —  holding  it  "  like  a  dancer. °  "  It  looked 
in  his  hands  rather  like  an  emblem   than  an  instrument  of 


22  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

authority;  and  an  emblem,  too,  he  was  ashamed  of.  He  was 
a  good  easy  man,  that  did  not  care  to  ruffle  his  own  peace,  nor 
perhaps  set  any  great  consideration  upon  the  value  of  juvenile 
time.  He  came  among  us,  now  and  then,  but  often  staid  away 
5  whole  days  from  us;  and  when  he  came,  it  made  no  difference 
to  us  —  he  had  his  private  room  to  retire  to,  the  short  time  he 
staid,  to  be  out  of  the  sound  of  our  noise.  Our  mirth  and  up 
roar  went  on.  "We  had  classics  of  our  own,  without  being  be- 
holden to  "insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome,"  that  passed  current 

10  among  us  —  Peter  Wilkins°  —  the  Adventures  of  the  Hon.  Cap- 
tain Robert  Boyle  —  the  Fortunate  Blue-coat  Boy — and  the 
like.  Or  we  cultivated  a  turn  for  mechanic  or  scieutitic  opera- 
tions ;  making  little  sun-dials  of  paper ;  or  weaving  those  in- 
genious parentheses,  called  cat-cradles ;  or  making  dry  peas  to 

15  dance  upon  the  end  of  a  tin  pipe;  or  studying  the  art  military 
over  that  laudable  game  "French  and  English,"  and  a  hundred 
other  such  devices  to  pass  away  the  time  —  mixing  the  useful 
with  the  agreeable  —  as  would  have  made  the  souls  of  Rous- 
seau°  and  John  Locke°  chuckle  to  have  seen  us. 

20  Matthew  Field  belonged  to  that  class  of  modest  divines  who 
affect  to  mix  in  equal  proportion  the  gentleman,  the  scholar,  and 
the  Christian:  but,  I  know  not  how.  the  first  ingredient  is 
generally  found  to  be  the  predominating  dose  in  the  composi- 
tion.    He  was  engaged  in  gay  parties,  or  with  his  courtly  bow 

25  at  some  episcopal  levee,  when  he  should  have  been  attending 
upon  us.  He  had  for  many  years  the  classical  charge  of  a 
hundred  children,  during  the  four  or  five  first  years  of  their 
education  ;  and  his  very  highest  form  seldom  proceeded  further 
than  two  or  three  of  the  introductory  fables  of  Ph8edrus.°    How 

30  things  were  suffered  to  go  on  thus,  I  cannot  guess.  Boyer,  who 
was  the  proper  person  to  have  remedied  these  abuses,  always 
affected,  perhaps  felt,  a  delicacy  in  interfering  in  a  province  not 
strictly  his  own.  I  have  not  been  without  my  suspicions,  that 
he  was  not  altogether  displeased  at  the  contrast  we  presented 

35  to  his  end  of  the  school.  We  were  a  sort  of  Helots°  to  his  young 
Spartans.  He  would  sometimes,  with  ironic  deference,  send  to 
borrow  a  rod  of  the  Under  jNlaster,  and  then,  with  Sardonic^ 
grin,  observe  to  one  of  his  upper  boys, ''  how  neat  and  fresh  the 
twigs  looked."     "While  his  pale  students  were  battering  their 


CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL  23 

brains  over  Xenoplion  and  Plato,  with  a  silence  as  deep  as  that 
enjoined  by  the  JSaniite,°  we  were  enjoying-  ourselves  at  our  ease 
in  our  little  Goshen.°  We  saw  a  little  into  the  secrets  of  his 
discipline,  and  the  prospect  did  but  the  more  reconcile  us  to 
our  lot.  His  thunders  rolled  innocuous  for  us  ;  his  storms  came  5 
near,  but  never  touched  us  ;  contrary  to  Gideon's  miracle,"  while 
all  ai'ound  were  drenched,  our  fleece  w^as  dry.^  His  boys  turned 
out  the  better  scholars;  we,  I  suspect,  have  the  advantage  in 
temper.  His  pupils  cannot  speak  of  him  without  something  of 
terror  allaying  their  gratitude ;  the  remembrance  of  Field  comes  10 
back  with  all  the  soothing  images  of  indolence,  and  summer 
slumbers,  and  w^ork  like  play,  and  innocent  idleness,  and  Ely- 
sian°  exemptions,  and  life  itself  a  "playing  holiday." 

Though  sufficiently  removed  from  the  jurisdiction  of  Boyer, 
we  w^ere  near  enough  (as  I  have  said)  to  understand  a  little  of  15 
his  system.  We  occasionally  heard  sounds  of  the  Ululantes° 
and  caught  glances  of  Tartarus. °  B.  was  a  rabid  pedant.  His 
English  style  was  cramjDt  to  barbarism.  His  Easter  anthems 
(for  his  duty  obliged  him  to  those  periodical  flights)  were  grat- 
ing as  scrannel  pipes.°2_He  would  laugh,  ay,  and  heartily,  20 

but  then  it  must  be  at  Flaccus's"^  quibble  about  Rex or  at 

the  tristis  se Veritas  in  mdtu,  or  inspicere  in  patinas,  of  Terence"  — 
thin  jests,  which  at  their  first  broaching  could  hardly  have  had 
vis  enough  to  move  a  Roman  muscle.  —  He  had  two  wigs,  both 
pedantic,  but  of  differing  omen.  The  one  serene,  smiling,  fresh  25 
powdered,  betokening  a  mild  day.  The  other,  an  old  discoloured, 
unkempt,  angry  caxon,°  denoting  frequent  and  bloody  execu- 
tion. Woe  to  the  school,  when  he  made  his  morning  appear- 
ance in  his  passy,  or  passionate  wig.  No  comet  expounded  surer. 
—  J.  B.  had  a  heavy  hand.    I  have  known  him  double  his  knotty  30 

1  Cowiey." 

2  In  this  and  everything  B.  was  the  antipodes  of  his  coadjutor. 
While  the  former  was  digging  his  brains  for  crude  anthems,  worth 
a  pig-nut,  F.  would  be  recreating  his  gentlemanly  fancy  in  the  more 
flowery  walks  of  the  Muses.  A  little  dramatic  effusion  of  his,  under 
the  name  of  Vertumnus  and  Pomona,  is  not  yet  forgotten  by  the 
chroniclers  of  that  sort  of  literature.  It  was  accepted  by  Garriek," 
but  the  town  did  not  give  it  their  sanction.  —  B.  used  to  say  of  it,  in  a 
way  of  half-compliment,  half-irony,  that  it  was  too  classical  for  repre- 
sentation. 


24  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

fist  at  a  poor  trembling  child  (the  maternal  milk  hardly  dry 
upon  its  lip-^)  with  a  "  ISirrah,  do  you  presume  to  set  your  wits 
at  meV"  —  Nothing  was  more  common  than  to  see  him  make  a 
headlong  entry  into  the  school-room,  from  his  inner  recess,  or 

5  library,  and,  with  turbulent  eye,  singling  out  a  lad,  roar  out, 
'•  Od's  ray  life,  Sirrah,"  (his  favourite  adjuration)  "  I  liave  a  great 
mind  to  whip  you,"  —  then,  wdth  as  sudden  a  retracting  impulse, 
fling  back  into  his  lair  —  and,  after  a  cooling  lapse  of  some 
minutes  (during  which  all  but  the  culprit  had  totally  forgotten 

10  the  context)  drive  headlong  out  again,  piecing  out  his  imper- 
fect sense,  as  if  it  had  been  some  Devil's  Litany,  with  the  exple- 
tory  yell  —  ^^  and  I  will,  too."  —  In  his  gentler  moods,  when 
the  rahidus  furor  was  assuaged,  he  had  resort  to  an  ingenious 
method,  peculiar,  from  what  I  have  heard,  to  himself, of  whipping 

15  the  boy,  and  reading  the  Debates,  at  the  same  time;  a  paragraph, 
and  a  lash  between ;  which  in  those  times,  when  parliamentary 
oratory  was  most  at  a  height  and  flourishing  in  these  realms, 
was  not  calculated  to  impress  the  patient  with  a  veneration  for 
the  diffuser  graces  of  rhetoric. 

20  Once,  and  but  once,  the  uplifted  rod  was  known  to  fall  in- 
effectual from  his  hand  —  when  droll  squinting  W having 

been  caught  putting  the  inside  of  the  master's  desk  to  a  use 
for  which  the  architect  had  clearly  not  designed  it,  to  justify 
himself,  with  great  simplicity  averred,  that  he  did  not  know  that 

25  the  thing  had  been  foreivarned.  This  exquisite  irrecognition  of 
any  law  antecedent  to  the  oral  or  declaratory,  struck  so  irre- 
sistibly upon  the  fancy  of  all  who  heard  it  (the  pedagogue  him- 
self not  excepted)  that  remission  was  unavoidable. 

L.  has  given  credit  to  B.'s  great  merits   as  an   instructor. 

30  Coleridge,  in  his  literary  life,  has  pronounced  a  more  intelligi- 
ble and  ample  encomium  on  them.  The  author  of  the  Country 
Spectator  doubts  not  to  compare  him  with  the  ablest  teachers 
of  antiquity.  Perhaps  we  cannot  dismiss  him  better  than  with 
the  pious  ejaculation  of  C, — when  he  heard  that  his  old  mas- 

35ter  was  on  his  death-bed  —  "Poor  J.  B. !  —  may  all  his  faults 
be  forgiven  ;  and  may  he  be  wafted  to  bliss  by  little  cherub 
boys,  all  head  and  wings,  with  no  bottoms  to  reproach  his 
sublunary  infirmities." 

Under  him  were  many  good  and  sound  scholars  bred.  —  First 


•  CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL  25 

Grecian"  of  my  time  was  Lancelot  Pepys  Stevens,  kindest  of 
boys  and  men,  since  Co-granimar-master  (and  inseparable  com- 
panion) with  Dr.  T e.     What  an  edifying  spectacle  did  this 

brace  of  friends  present  to  those  who  Vemembered  the  anti- 
socialities  of  their  predecessors! — You  never  met  the  one  by 5 
chance  in  the  street  without  a  wonder,  which  was  quickly  dis- 
sipated by  the  almost  immediate  subappearance  of  the  other. 
Generally  arm-in-arm,  these  kindly  coadjutors  lightened  for 
each  other  the  toilsome  duties  of  their  profession,  and  when, 
in  advanced  age,  one  found  it  convenient  to  retire,  the  other  10 
was  not  long  in  discovering  that  it  suited  him  to  lay  down  the 
fasces  also.  Oh,  it  is  ]3leasant,  as  it  is  rare,  to  find  the  same 
arm  linked  in  yours  at  forty,  which  at  thirteen  helped  it  io 
turn  over  the  Cicero  De  Amicitid°  or  some  tale  of  Antique 
Friendshij),  which  the  young  heart  even  then  was  burning  to  15 

anticipate!  —  Co-Grecian  with  S.  was  Th ,  who  has  since 

executed    with    ability   various    diplomatic   functions    at    the 

Northern   courts.     Th was  a  tall,  dark,  saturnine  youth, 

sparing  of  speech,  with  raven  locks.  —  Thomas  Fanshaw  Mid- 
dleton  followed  him  (now  Bishop  of  Calcutta),  a  scliolar  and  20 
a  gentleman  in  his  teens.     He  has  the  reputation  of  an  excel- 
lent critic;  and  is  author  (besides  the  Country  Spectator)  of  a 
Treatise  on  the  Greek  Article,  against  Sharpe.  —  M.  is  said  to 
bear  his  mitre°  high  in  India,  where  the  regni  novitas  (I  dare 
say)    sufficiently  justifies   the   bearing.     A    humility  quite   as  25 
primitive  as  that  of  Jewel°  or  Hooker"  might  not  be  exactly 
fitted  to  impress  the  minds  of  those  Anglo-Asiatic  diocesans 
with  a  reverence  for  home  institutions,  and  the  church  which 
those  fathers  watered.     The  manners  of  M.  at  school,  though 
firm,  were  mild  and  unassuming.  —  Next  to  M.  (if  not  senior  30 
to  him)  was  Richards,  author  of  the  Aboriginal  Bi'itons,  the 
most  spirited  of    the  Oxford  Prize  Poems ;    a   pale,  studious 

Grecian.  — Then  followed  poor  S ,  ill-fated  M !  of  these 

the  Muse  is  silent. 

Finding  some  of  Edward's  race  35 

Unhappy,  pass  their  annals  hy. 

Come  back  into  memory,  like  as  thou  wert  in  the  day-spring 
of  thy  fancies,  with  hope  like  a  fiery  coIumn°  before  thee  —  the 


26  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELFA 

dark  pillar  not  yet  turned  —  Samuel  Ta3'lor  Coleridge  —  Logi- 
cian, Metaphysician,  Bard  !  —  How  have  I  seen  the  casual  passer 
through  the  Cloisters  stand  still,  entranced  with  admiration 
(while  he  weighed  the  disproportion  between  the  speech  and 
5  the  (jarh  of  the  young  Mirandula°),  to  hear  thee  unfold,  in  thy 
deep  and  sweet  intonations,  the  mysteries  of  Jamblichus,  or 
Plotiiius°  (for  even  in  those  yeais  thou  waxedst  not  pale  at  such 
philosophic  draughts),  or  reciting  Homer  in  his  Greek,  or  Pindar° 
while  the   walls  of  the  old   Grey  Friars  reechoed  to  the 

10  accents  of  the  inspired  charity-hoy  I  —  Many  v/ere  the  "wit-com- 
bats" (to  dally  awhile  with  the  words  of  old  Fuller°)  between 

him  and  C.  V.  Le  G ,  "  which  two  I  behold  like  a  Spanish 

great  galleon,  and  an  English  man  of  war:  Master  Coleridge, 
like  the  former,  was  built  far  higher  in  learning,  solid,  but  slow 

15  in  his  performances ;  C.  V.  L.,  with  the  English  man  of  Avar, 
lesser  in  bulk,  but  lighter  in  sailing,  could  turn  with  all  tides, 
tack  about,  and  take  advantage  of  all  winds,  by  the  quickness 
of  his  wit  and  invention." 

Nor  shalt  thou,  their  compeer,  be  quickly  forgotten,  Allen.° 

20  with  the  cordial  smile,  and  still  more  cordial  laugh,  with  which 
thou  wert  wont  to  make  the  old  Cloisters  shake,  in  thy  cogni- 
tion of  some  poignant  jest  of  theirs;  or  the  anticipation  of  some 
more  material,  and  peradventure  practical  one,  of  thine  own. 
Extinct  are  those  smiles,  with  that  beautiful  countenance,  with 

25  Avhich  (for  thou  wert  the  Nirens  formosus°  of  the  school),  in  the 
days  of  thy  maturer  waggery,  thou  didst  disarm  the  wrath  of 
infuriated  town-damsel,  who,  incensed  by  provoking  pinch, 
turning  tigress-like  round,  suddenly  converted  by  thy  angel- 
look,  exoJianged  the  half-formed  terrible  ''bl ,"  for  a  gentler 

30  greeting  —  "  bless  thy  handsome  face  !  " 

Xext  follow  two,  who  ought  to  be  now  alive,  and  the  friends 

of  Elia  —  the  junior  Le  G and  F ;  who  impelled,  the 

former  by  a  roving  temper,  the  latter  by  too  quick  a  sense  of 
neglect  —  ill  capable  of  enduring  the  slights   poor    Sizars    are 

35  sometimes  subject  to  in  our  seats  of  learning  —  exchanged  their 
Alma  Mater  for  the  camp:  perishing,  one  by  climate,  and  one 

on  the  plains  of    Salamanca: — Le    G .sanguine,  volatile, 

sweet-natured ;  F ,  dogged,  faithful,  anticipative  of  insult, 

warm-hearted,  with  something  of  the  old  Roman  height  about 

40  him. 


THE    TWO    RACES    OF    MEN  "  27 

Fine,  frank-hearted  Fr ,  the  present  master  of  Hertford, 

with  iNIarmaduke  T ,  mildest  of    Missionaries  —  and  both 

my  good  friends  still  —  close  the  catalogue  of  Grecians  in  my 
time. 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN 

The  human  species,  according  to  the  best  theory  T  can  form  5 
of  it,  is  composed  of  two  distinct  races,  the  men  iclio  borrow,  and 
the  men  loho  lend.     To   these   two   original  diversities  may  be 
reduced  all   those    impertinent   classifications  of    Gothic    and 
Celtic  tribes,  white  men,  black  men,  red  men.    All  the  dwellers 
upon  earth,  "  Parthians,°  and  Medes,  and  Elamites,"  flock  hither,  IQ 
and  do  naturally  fall  in  with  one  or  other  of  these  primary  dis- 
tinctions.    The  infinite  superiority  of  the  former,  which  I  chose 
to  designate  as  the  great  race,  is  discernible  in  their  figure,  port,° 
and    a  certain  instinctive   sovereignty.     The   latter   are   born 
degraded.     "  He  shall  serve  his  brethren."    There  is  something  15 
in  the  air  of  one  of  this  cast,  lean  and  suspicious^  ;  contrasting 
with  the  open,  trusting,  generous  manners  of  the  other. 

Observe  who  have  been  the  greatest  borrowers  of  all  ages  — 
Alcibiades° — Falstafi:°  —  Sir  Richard  Steele"  —  our  late  incom- 
parable Brinsley° —  what  a  family  likeness  in  all  four !        "  20 

AVhat  a  careless,  even  deportment  hath  your  borrower  !  Avhat 
rosy  gills  !  what  a  beautiful  reliance  on  Providence  doth  he 
manifest,  —  taking  no  more  thought  than  lilies  °!  What  con- 
tempt for  money,  —  accounting  it  (yours  and  mine  especially) 
no  better  than  dross!  What  a  lii3eral  confounding  of  those 25 
pedantic  distinctions  of  meum  and  tuum  !  or  rather,  what  a  noble 
simplification  of  language  (beyond  Tooke'^),  resolving  these  sup- 
posed opposites  into  one  clear,  intelligible  pronoun  adjective  ! 
—  What  near  approaches  doth  he  make  to  the  primitive  com- 
munity, —  to  the  extent  of  one  half  of  the  principle  at  least !        30 

He  is  the  true  taxer  who  "calleth  all  the  world  up  to  be 
taxed°;  "  and  the  distance  is  as  vast  between  him  and  one  oftis, 
as  subsisted  between  the  Augustan  Majesty  and  the  poorest 
obolary°  Jew  that  paid  it  tribute-pittance  at  Jerusalem  !  —  IHs 


28  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

exactions,  too,  have  such  a  cheerful,  vohintary  air  !  So  far 
removed  from  your  sour  parochial  or  state-gatherers,  —  those 
ink-horn  varlets.  who  carry  their  want  of  welcome  in  their 
faces  !  He  cometh  to  you  "s^ith  a  smile,  and  troubleth  you  with 
5  no  receipt ;  confining  himself  to  no  set  season.  Every  day  is 
his  Candlemas,°  or  his  feast  of  Holy  Michael.^  He  applieth  the 
lene  tonnentum°  oi  a  pleasant  look  to  your  purse,  —  which  to 
that  gentle  warmth  expands  her  silken  leaves,  as  naturally  as 
the  cloak  of -the  traveller,  for  which  sun  and  wind  contended  I 

10  He  is  the  true  Propontic  which  never  ebbeth!  The  sea  which 
taketh  handsomely  at  each  man's  hand.  In  vain  the  victim, 
whom  he  delighteth  to  honour,  struggles  with  destiny ;  he  is 
in  the  net.  Lend  therefore  cheerfully,  O  man  ordained  to  lend  — 
that  thou  lose  not  in  the  end,  with  thy  worldly  penny,  the 

15  reversion  promised. °  Combine  not  preposterously  in  thine 
own  person  the  penalties  of  Lazarus  aixl  of  Dives° !  —  but,  when 
thou  seest  the  proper  authority  coming,  meet  it  smilingly,  as  it 
were  half-way.  Come,  a  handsome  sacrifice  !  See  how  light 
he  makes  of  it  I     Strain  not  courtesies  with  a  noble  enemy. 

20  Reflections  like  the  foregoing  were  forced  upon  my  mind  by 
the  death  of  my  old  friend.  Ralph  Bigod,  Esq.,  who  parted  this 
life  on  Wednesday  evening;  dying,  as  he  had  lived,  without 
much  trouble.  He  boasted  himself  a  descendant  from  mighty 
ancestors  of  that  name,  Avho  heretofore  held  ducal  dignities  in  this 

25  realm.  In  his  actions  and  sentiments  he  belied  not  the  stock 
to  which  he  pretended.  Early  in  life  he  found  himself  invested 
with  ample  revenues ;  which,  with  that  noble  disinterestedness 
which  I  have  noticed  as  inherent  in  men  of  the  great  race,  he 
took  almost  immediate  measures  entirely  to  dissipate  and  bring 

30 to  nothing:  for  there  is  something  revolting  in  the  idea  of  a 
king  holding  a  private  purse ;  and  the  thoughts  of  Bigod  were 
all  regal.  Thus  furnished,  by  the  very  act  of  disf urnishment ; 
getting  rid  of  the  cumbersome  luggage  of  riches,  more  apt  (as 
one  sings) 

35  To  slacken  virtue,  and  abate  her  edge, 

Than  prompt  her  to  do  aught  may  nierit  praise, 

he  set  forth,  like  some  Alexander, "^  npon  his  great  enterprise, 
"  borrowino-  and  to  borrow  !  " 


THE    TWO    RACES    OF   MEN  29 

In  his  periegesis,  or  triumphant  progress  throughout  this 
island,  it  has  been  calculated  that  he  laid  a  tythe  part  of 
the  inhabitants  under  contribution.  I  reject  this  estimate 
as  greatly  exaggerated: — but  having  had  the  honour  of 
accompanying  my  friend,  divers  times,  in  his  perambula-5 
tions  about  this  vast  city,  I  own  I  was  greatly  struck  at  first 
with  the  prodigious  number  of  faces  we  met,  who  claimed 
a  sort  pf  respectful  acquaintance  with  us.  He  was  one  day  so 
obliging  as  to  explain  the  phenomenon.  It  seems,  these  were 
his  tributaries ;  feeders  of  his  exchequer ;  gentlemen,  his  good  lo 
friends  (as  he  was  pleased  to  express  himself),  to  whom  he 
had  occasionally  been  beholden  for  a  loan.  Their  multitudes 
did  no  way  disconcert  him.  He  rather  took  a  pride  in  number- 
ing them  :  and,  with  Conius,  seemed  pleased  to  be  "  stocked 
with  so  fair  a  herd."  15 

With  such  sources,  it  was  a  wonder  how  he  contrived  to  keep 
Ms  treasury  always  empty.  He  did  it  by  force  of  an  aphorism, 
which  he  had  often  in  his  mouth,  that  "  money  kept  longer 
than  three  days  stinks."  So  he  made  use  of  it  while  it  was 
fresh.  A  good  part  he  drank  away  (for  he  was  an  excellent  20 
toss-pot),  some  he  gave  away,  the  rest  he  threw  away,  literally 
tossing  and  hurling  it  violently  from  him  —  as  boys  do  burrs, 
or  as  if  it  had  been  infectious,  —  into  ponds,  or  ditches,  or  deep 
holes,  inscrutable  cavities  of  the  earth ;  —  or  he  would  bury  it 
(where  he  would  never  seek  it  again)  by  a  river's  side  under  25 
some  bank,  which  (he  would  facetiously  observe)  paid  no  inter- 
est —  but  out  away  from  him  it  must  go  peremptorily,  as 
Hagar's  offspring^  into  the  wilderness,  while  it.  was  sweet.  He 
never  missed  it.  The  streams  were  perennial  which  fed  his  fisc.'^ 
When  new  supplies  became  necessary,  the  first  person  that  had  .30 
the  felicity  to  fall  in  with  him,  friend  or  stranger,  was  sure  to 
contribute  to  the  deficiency.  For  Bigod  had  an  undeniable  way 
with  him.  He  had  a  cheerful,  open  exterior,  a  quick  jovial  eye, 
a  bald  forehead,  just  touched  with  grey  {cana  Jides)°  He  an- 
ticipated no  excuse,  and  found  none.  And,  waiving  for  a  while  35 
my  theory  as  to  the  great  race,  I  would  put  it  to  the  most  un- 
theorising  reader,  who  may  at  times  have  disposable  coin  in  his 
pocket,  whether  it  is  not  jnore  repugnant  to  the  kindliness  of  his 
nature  to  refuse  such  a  one  as  1  am  describing,  than  to  say  no 


30  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

to  a  poor  petitionaiT  rogue  (your  bastard  borrower),  who,  by 
his  miiinping°  visiioniy,  tells  you  that  he  expects  nothing  better ; 
and,  therefore,  whose  preconceiyed  notions  and  expectations 
you  do  in  reality  so  much  less  shock  in  the  refusal. 

5  When  I  think  of  this  man  ;  his  fiery  glow  of  heart ;  his  s\yell 
of  feeling ;  how  magnificent,  how  ideal  he  was ;  how  great  at 
the  midnight  hour;  and  when  I  compare  with  him  the  com- 
panions with  whom  I  haye  associated  since,  I  grudge  the  saying 
of  a  few  idle  ducats,  and  think  that  I  am  fallen  into  the  society 

10  of  lenders,  and  litde  men. 

To  one  like  Elia,  whose  treasures  are  rather  cased  in  leather 
covers  than  closed  in  iron  coffers,  there  is  a  class  of  alienators 
more  formidable  than  that  which  I  haye  touched  upon  ;  I  mean 
your  borrowers  of  books  —  those  mutilators  of  collections,  spoilers 

15  of  the  symmetry  of  shelves,  and  creators  of  odd.A'olumes.  There 
is  Comberbat€h,°  matchless  in  his  depredations ! 

That  foul  gap  in  the  bottom  shelf  facing  you,  like  a  great 
eye-tooth  knocked  out  —  (you  are  now  with  me  in  my  little 
back  study  in  Bloomsbury.  Reader  I)  —  with  the  huge  Switzer- 

20  like°  tomes  on  each  side  (like  the  Guildhall  giants.*^  in  tlieir 
reformed  posture,  guardant  of  nothing)^  once  held  the  tallest 
of  my  folios,  Opera  Bonarenturce°  choice  and  massy  divinity,  to 
which  its  two  supportei's  (school  divinity  also,  but  of  a  lesser 
calibre,  —  Bellarmine,"   and   Holy  Thomas), °   showed   but   as 

25  dwarfs,  —  itself  an  Ascapart°!  —  that  Comberbatch  abstracted 
upon  the  faith  of  a  theory  he  holds,  which  is  more  easy,  I  con- 
fess, for  me  to  suffer  by  than  to  refute,  namely,  that  "  the  title 
to  property  in  a  book  (my  Bonaventure,  for  instance)  is  in  exact 
ratio  to  the  claimant's  powers  of  understanding  and  appreciat- 

30  ing  the  same."  Should  he  go  on  acting  upon  this  theory,  which 
of  our  shelves  is  safe  ? 

The  slight  vacuum  in  the  left-hand  case  —  two  shelves  from 
the  ceiling  —  scarcely  distinguishable  but  by  the  quick  eye  of  a 
loser — was  whiloni°  the  commodious  resting  place  of   Browne 

35  on  Urn  Burial.  C.  will  hardly  allege  that  he  knows  more 
about  that  treatise  than  I  do,  who  introduced  it  to  him,  and 
was  indeed  the  first  (of  the  moderns)  to  discover  its  beauties 
—  but  so  have  I  known  a  foolish  lover  to  praise  his  mistress  in 
the  presence  of  a  rival  more  qualified  to  carry  her  off  than  him- 


THE    TWO    RACES    OF   MEN  31 

self.  — Just  below,  Dodsley's°  dramas  want  their  fourth  volume, 
where  Vittoria  Corombona°  is  !  The  remainder  nine  are  as  dis- 
tasteful as  Priam's  refuse"  sons,  w^hen  the  Fates  borrowed  Hec- 
tor.    Here  stood  the  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,^  in  sober  state. 

—  There    loitered  the  Complete  Angier°;  quiet  as  in  life,  by  5 
some  stream  side.  —  In  yonder  nook,  John  Buncle,°  a  widower- 
volume,  with  "  eyes  closed,"  mourns  his  ravished  mate. 

One  justice  I  must  do  my  friend,  that  if  he  sometimes,  like 
the  sea,  sweeps  away  a  treasure,  at  another  time,  sea-like,  he 
throws  up  as  rich  an  equivalent  to  match  it.  I  have  a  small  10 
under-collection  of  this  nature  (my  friend's  gatherings  in  his 
various  calls),  picked  up,  he  has  forgotten  at  what  odd  places, 
and  deposited  with  as  little  memory  at  mine.  I  take  in  these 
orphans,  the  twice-deserted.  These  proselytes  of  the  gate  are 
welcome  as  the  true  Hebrews.  There  they  stand  in  conjunc-15 
tion  ;  natives,  and  naturalised.  The  latter  seem  as  little  dis- 
posed to  inquire  out  their  true  lineage  as  I  am.  —  I  charge  no 
warehouse-room  for  these  deodands,°  nor  shall  ever  put  myself 
to  the  ungentlemanly  trouble  of  advertising  a  sale  of  them  to 
pay  expenses.  20 

To  lose  a  volume  to  C.  carries  some  sense  and  meaning  in  it. 
You  are  sure  that  he  will  make  one  hearty  meal  on  your  viands, 
if  he  can  give  no  account  of  the  platter  after  it.  But  what 
moved  thee,  wayward,  spiteful  K.,  to  be  so  importunate  to  carry 
off  with  thee,  in  spite  of  tears  and  adjurations  to  thee  to  forbear,  25 
the  Letters  of  that  princely  woman,  the  thrice  noble  Margaret 
Newcastle"?  —  knowing  at  the  time,  and  knowing  that  I  knew 
also,  thou  most  assuredly  wouldst  never  turn  over  one  leaf  of 
the  illustrious  folio :  —  what  but  the  mere  spirit  of  contradic- 
tion, and   childish  love   of  getting   the   better  of  thy  friend? 30 

—  Then,  worst  cut  of  all!  to  transport  it  with  thee  to  the 
Galilean  land  — 

Unworthy  land  to  harl)our  such  a  sweetness, 

A  virtue  in  which  all  ennobling  thoughts  dwelt, 

Pure  thoughts,  kind  thoughts,  high  thoughts,  her  sex's  wonder!       35 

hadst  thou  not  thy  play-books,  and  books  of  jests  and  fan- 
cies, about  thee,  to  keep  thee  merry,  even  as  thou  keepest  all 
companies  with  thy  quips  and  mirthful  tales  ?     Child  of  the 


32  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Green-room,  it  was  unkindly  done  of  thee.  Thy  wife,  too,  that 
part-French,  better-part-English-woman !  —  that  she  could  fix 
upon  no  other  treatise  to  bear  away,  in  kindly  token  of  remem- 
bering us,  than  the  works  of  Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brook°  —  of 

5  which  no  Frenchman,  nor  woman  of  France,  Italy,  or  England, 
was  ever  by  nature  constituted  to  comprehend  a  tittle !  Was 
there  not  Zimmerman^  on  Solitude  ? 

Reader,  if  haply  thou  art  blessed  with  a  moderate  collection, 
be  shy  of  showing  it ;  or  if  thy  heart  overfloweth  to  lend  them, 

10  lend  thy  books ;  but  let  it  be  to  such  a  one  as  S.  T.  C.  —  he  will 
return  them  (generally  anticipating  the  time  appointed)  with 
usury;  enriched  with  annotations,  tripling  their  value.  I  have 
had  experience.  Many  are  these  precious  MSS.  of  his — (in 
matter   oftentimes,    and    almost   in    quantity   not   unfrequently, 

15  vying  with  the  originals)  in  no  very  clerkly  hand  —  legible  in 
myDaniel°;  in  old  Burton;  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne;  and  those 
abstruser  cogitations  of  the  Greville,  now,  alas !  wandering  in 
Pagan  lands.  —  I  counsel  thee,  shut  not  thy  heart,  nor  thy 
library,  against  S.  T.  C. 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE 

20  Every  man  hath  two  birthdays:  two  days,  at  least,  in  every 
year,  which  set  him  upon  revolving  the  lapse  of  time,  as  it  affects 
his  mortal  duration.  The  one  is  that  which  in  an  especial  man- 
neo-  he  termeth  his.  In  the  gradual  desuetude  of  old  observ- 
ances, this  custom  of   solemnizing  our  proper   birthday  hath 

25  nearly  passed  away,  or  is  left  to  children,  who  reflect  nothing 
at  all  about  the  matter,  nor  understand  anything  in  it  beyond 
cake  and  orange.  But  the  birth  of  a  New  Year  is  of  an  inter- 
est too  wide  to  be  pretermitted  by  king  or  cobbler.  Xo  one 
ever  regarded  the   First  of  January  with  indifference.     It  is 

30  that  from  which  all  date  their  time,  and  count  upon  what  is 
left.     It  is  the  nativity  of  our  common  Adam. 

Of  all  sound  of  all  bells  —  (bells,  the  music  nighest  border- 
ing upon  heaven)  —  most  solemn  and  touching  is  the  peal  which 
rings  out  the  Old  Year.     I  never  hear  it  without  a  gathering-up 


iV^^TF    YEAR'S    EVE  33 

of  my  mind  to  a  concentration  of  all  the  images  that  have  been 
diffused  over  the  past  twelvemonth ;  all  I  have  done  or  suffered, 
performed  or  neglected,  in  that  regretted  time.  I  begin  to 
know  its  worth,  as  when  a  person  dies.  It  takes  a  personal 
colour ;  nor  was  it  a  poetical  flight  in  a  contemporary,°  when  I 
he  exclaimed  — 

I  saw  the  skirts  of  the  departing  Year. 

It  is  no  more  than  what  in  sober  sadness  every  one  of  us 
seems  to  be  conscious  of,  in  that  awful  leave-taking.  I  am 
sure  I  felt  it,  and  all  felt  it  with  me,  last  night ;  though  some  10 
of  my  companions  affected  rather  to  manifest  an  exhilaration 
at  the  birth  of  the  coming  year,  than  any  very  tender  regrets 
for  the  decease  of  its  predecessor.  But  I.  am  none  of  those 
who  — 

"Welcome  the  coming,  speed  the  parting  guest.  ^^ 

I  am  naturally,  beforehand,  shy  of  novelties ;  new  books,  new 
faces,  new  years,  —  from  some  mental  twist  which  makes  it 
difficult  in  me  to  face  the  prospective.  I  have  almost  ceased 
to  hope ;  and  am  sanguine  only  in  the  prospects  of  other 
(former  years).  I  plunge  into  foregone  visions  and  conclu-20 
sions.  I  encounter  pell-mell  with  past  disappointments.  I  am 
armour-proof  against  old  discouragements.  I  forgive,  or  over- 
come in  fancy,  old  adversaries.  I  play  over  again  for  love,  as 
the  gamesters  phrase  it,  games  for  which  I  once  paid  so  dear. 
I  would  scarce  now  have  any  of  those  untow^ard  accidents  and  25 
events  of  my  life  reversed.  I  would  no  more  alter  them  than 
the  incidents  of  some  well-contrived  novel.  Methinks,  it  is 
better  that  I  should  have  pined  away  seven  of  my  goldenest 
years,  when  I  was  thrall  to  the  fair  hair,  and  fairer  eyes,  of 
Alice  W — n,°  than  that  so  passionate  a  love  adventure  should  30 
be  lost.  It  was  better  that  our  family  should  have  missed  that 
legacy,  which  old  Dorrell  cheated  us  of,  than  that  I  should  have 
at  this  moment  two  thousand  pounds  in  banco,  and  be  without 
the  idea  of  that  specious  old  rogue. 

In  a  degree  beneath  manhood,  it  is  my  infirmity  to  look  back  35 
upon  those  early  days.     Do  I  advance  a  paradox  when  I  say, 


34  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

that,  skipping  over  the  intervention  of  forty  years,  a  man  may 
have  leave  to  love  hiniseJf  wiihowi  the  imputation  of  self-love  V 

If  I  know  aught  of  myself,  no  one  whose  mind  is  introspec- 
tive—  and  mine  is  painfully  so  —  can  have  a  less  respect  for 

5  his  present  identity,  than  I  have  for  the  man  Elia.  I  know 
him  to  be  light,  and  vain,  and  humoursome ;  a  notorious 
*  *  *  ;  addicted  to  *  *  *  ;  averse  from 
counsel,  neither  taking  it,  nor  offering  it; —  *  *  * 
besides;  a  stammering  buffoon;  what  you  will;  lay  it  on,  and 

10  spare  not ;  I  subscribe  to  it  all,  and  much  more,  than  thou 
canst  be  willing  to  lay  at  his  door  —  but  for  the  child  Elia  — 
that  "other  me,"  there,  in  the  background  —  I  must  take  leave 
to  cherish  the  remembrance  of  that  young  master  —  with  as 
little  reference,  I  protest,  to  his  stuj^id  changeling  of  five  and 

15  forty,  as  if  it  had  been  a  child  of  some  other  house,  and  not  of 
my  parents.  I  can  cry  over  its  patient  small-pox  at  five,  and 
rougher  medicaments.  I  can  lay  its  jioor  fevered  head  upon 
the  sick  pillow  at  Christ's,  and  wake  with  it  in  surprise  at  the 
gentle  posture  of  maternal  tenderness  hanging  over  it,  that  un- 

20  known  had  watched  its  sleep.  I  know  how  it  shrank  from  any 
the  least  colour  of  falsehood.  —  God  help  thee,  Elia,  how  art 
thou  changed^ !  —  Thou  art  sophisticated.  —  I  know  how  honest, 
how  courageous  (for  a  weakling)  it  was  —  how  religious,  how 
imaginative,  how  hopeful !     From  what  have  I  not  fallen,  if  the 

25  child  I  remember  was  indeed  myself,  —  and  not  some  dissem- 
bling guardian,  presenting  a  false  identity,  to  give  the  rule  to 
my  unpractised  steps,  and  regulate  the  tone  of  my  moral  being! 
That  I  am  fond  of  indulging,  beyond  a  hope  of  sympath}^  in 
such  retrospection,  may  be  the  symptom  of  some  sickly  idiosyn- 

SOcrasy.  Or  is  it  owing  to  another  cause:  simply,  that  being 
without  wife  or  family,  I  have  not  learned  to  project  myself 
enough  out  of  myself  ;  and  having  no  offspring  of  my  own  to 
dally  with,  I  turn  back  upon  memory,  and  adopt  my  own  early 
idea,  as  m}^  heir  and  favourite  ?     If  these  speculations  seem  f an- 

35tastical  to  thee,  Reader —  (a  busy  man,  perchance),  if  I  tread 
out  of  the  way  of  thy  sympathy,  and  am  singularly  conceited 
only,  I  retire,  impenetrable  to  ridicule,  under  the  phantom  cloud 
of  Elia. 

The  elders,  with  whom  I  was  brought  up,  were  of  a  character 


NEW    YEAR'S    EVE  35 

not  likely  to  let  slip  the  sacred  observance  cf  any  old  institu- 
tion;  and  the  ringing  out  of  the  Old  Year  ay  as  kept  by  them 
with  circumstances  of  peculiar  ceremony.  —  In  those  days  the 
sound  of  those  midnight  chimes,  though  it  seemed  to  raise 
hilarity  in  all  around  me,  never  failed  to  bring  a  train  of  5 
pensive  imagery  into  my  fancy.  Yet  I  then  scarce  conceived 
what  it  meant,  or  thought  of  it  as  a  reckoning  that  concerned 
me.  Not  childhood  alone,  but  the  young  man  till  thirty,  never 
feels  practically  that  he  is  mortal.  He  knows  it  indeed,  and,  if 
need  were,  he  could  preach  a  homily  on  the  fragility  of  life ;  10 
but  he  brings  it  not  home  to  himself,  any  more  than  in  a  hot 
June  we  can  appropriate  to  our  imagination  the  freezing  days 
of  December.  But  now,  shall  I  confess  a  truth  ? —  I  feel  these 
audits°  but  too  powerfully.  I  begin  to  count  the  probabilities 
of  my  duration,  and  to  grudge  at  the  expenditure  of  moments  15 
and  shortest  periods,  like  misers'  farthings.  In  proportion  as 
the  years  both  lessen  and  shorten,  I  set  more  count  upon  their 
periods,  and  would  fain  lay  my  ineffectual  finger  upon  the  spoke 
of  the  great  w^heel.  1  am  not  content  to  pass  away  "  like  a 
weaver's  shuttle.^"  Those  metaphors  solace  me  not,  nor20 
sweeten  the  unpalatable  draught  of  mortality.  I  care  not 
to  be  carried  with  the  tide,  that  smoothly  bears  human  life  to 
eternity ;  and  reluct°  at  the  inevitable  course  of  destiny.  I  am 
in  love  with  this,  green  earth ;  the  face  of  town  and  country ; 
the  unspeakable  rural  solitudes,  and  the  sweet  security  of  25 
streets.  I  would  set  up  my  tabernacle  here.  I  am  content 
to  stand  still  at  the  age  to  which  I  am  arrived  ;  I,  and  my 
friends  :  to  be  no  younger,  no  richer,  no  handsomer.  I  do  not 
want  to  be  weaned  by  age;  or  drop,  like  mellow  fruit,  as  they 
say,  into  the  grave.  —  Any  alteration,  on  this  earth  of  mine,  in  30 
diet  or  in  lodging,  puzzles  and  discomposes  me.  j\Iy  household 
gods  plant  a  terrible  fixed  foot,  and  are  not  rooted  up  without 
blood.  They  do  not  willingly  seek  Laviuian  shores.°  A  new 
state  of  being  staggers  me. 

Sun,  and  sky,  and  breeze,  and  solitary  walks,  and  summer  33 
holidays,  and  the  greenness  of  fields,  and  the  delicious  juices  of 
meats  and  fishes,  and  society,  and  the  cheerful  glass,  and  candle- 
light, and  fireside  conversations,  and  innocent  vanities,  and  jests, 
and  ij'ony  itself —  do  these  things  go  out  with  life  V 


36  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Can  a  ghost  laugh,  or  shake  his  gaunt  sides,  when  you  are 
pleasant  with  him  ? 

And  you,  my  midnight  darlings,  my  Folios  :  must  I  part  with 

the  intense  delight  of  having  you  (huge  armfuls)  in  my  em- 

5 braces?     Must  knowledge  come  to  me,  if  it  come  at  all,  by 

some  awkward  experiment  of  intuition,  and  no  longer  by  this 

familiar  process  of  reading  ? 

Shall  I  enjoy  friendships  there,  wanting  the  smiling  indica- 
tions which  point  me  to  them  here, — the  recognisable  face  — 

10  the  "  sweet  assurance  of  a  look  "  ? 

In  winter  this  intolerable  disinclination  to  dying  —  to  give  it 
its  mildest  name  —  does  more  especially  haunt  and  beset  me. 
In  a  genial  August  noon,  beneath  a  sweltering  sky,  death  is 
almost  problematic.     At  those  times  do  such  poor  snakes  as 

15  myself  enjoy  an  immortality.  Then  we  expand  and  burgeon.° 
Then  we  are  as  strong  again,  as  valiant  again,  as  wise  again,  and 
a  great  deal  taller.  The  blast  that  nips  and  shrinks  m.e,  pats  me 
in  thoughts  of  death.  All  things  allied  to  the  insubstantial,  wait 
upon  that  master  feeling;  cold,  numbness,  dreams,  perplexity  ; 

20  moonlight  itself,  with  its  shadowy  and  spectral  appearances, — 
that  cold  ghost  of  the  sun,  or  Phoebus'  sickly  sister,°  like  that 
innutritions  one  denounced  in  the  Canticles° : — I  am  none  of 
her  minions  —  I  hold  with  the  Persian.^ 

Whatsoever  thwarts,  or  puts  me  out  of  my  way,  brings  death 

25  unto  my  mind.  All  partial  evils,  like  humours,  run  into  that 
capital  plague-sore.  — I  have  heard  some  profess  an  indifference 
to  life.  Such  hail  the  end  of  their  existence  as  a  port  of  refuge ; 
and  speak  of  the  grave  as  of  some  soft  arms,  in  which  they  may 
slumber  as  on  a  pillow.     Some  have  wooed  death but  out 

30  upon  thee,  I  say,  thou  foul,  ugly  phantom  !  I  detest,  abhor, 
execrate,  and  (with  Friar  John)  give  thee  to  six  score  thou- 
sand devils,  as  in  no  instance  to  be  excused  or  tolerated,  but 
shunned  as  an  universal  viper ;  to  be  branded,  proscribed,  and 
spoken  evil  of !     In  no  way  can  I  be  brought  to  digest  thee, 

35  thou  thin,  melancholy  Pni-ation,  or  more  frightful  and  con- 
founding Positive  ! 

Those  antidotes,  prescribed  against  the  fear  of  thee,  are 
altogether  frigid  and  insulting,  like  thyself.  For  what  satis- 
faction hath  a  man,  that  he  shall  "lie  down  with  kings  and 


NEW    YEAR'S    EVE  37 

emperors  in  death,"  who  in  his  lifetime  never  greatly  coveted 
the  society  of  such  bedfellows?  —  or,  forsooth,  that  "  so  shall  the 
fairest  face  appear"? — why,  to  comfort  me,  must  Alice  W — n 
be  a  goblin  ?  More  than  all,  I  conceive  disgust  at  those  imper- 
tinent and  misbecoming  familiarities,  inscribed  upon  your  ordi-  5 
nary  tombstones.  Every  dead  man  must  take  upon  himself 
to  be  lecturing  me  with  his  odious  truism,  that  "  Such  as  he 
now  is,  I  must  shortly  be."  Not  so  shortly,  friend,  perhaps,  as 
thou  imaginest.  In  the  meantime  I  am  alive.  I  move  about. 
T  am  worth  twenty  of  thee.  Know  thy  betters !  Thy  New  10 
Years'  days  are  past.  I  survive,  a  jolly  candidate  for  1821. 
Another  cup  of  wine  —  and  while  that  turncoat  bell,  that  just 
now  mournfully  chanted  the  obsequies  of  1820  departed,  with 
changed  notes  lustily  rings  in  a  successor,  let  us  attune  to  its 
peal  the  song  made  on  a  like  occasion,  by  hearty,  cheerful  Mr.  15 
Cotton." 

THE  NEW  YEAR 

Hark,  the  cock  crows,  and  yon  bright  star 

Tells  us,  the  day  himself  s  not  far ; 

And  see  where,  breaking  from  the  night, 

He  gikls  the  western  hills  with  light.  20 

With  him  old  Janus  doth  appear, 

Peeping  into  the  future  year, 

With  such  a  look  as  seems  to  say 

The  prospect  is  not  good  that  way. 

Thus  do  we  rise  ill  sights  to  see,  25 

And  'gainst  ourselves  to  prophesy ; 

When  the  prophetic  fear  of  things 

A  more  tormenting  mischief  brings, 

More  full  of  soul  tormenting  gall 

Than  direst  mischiefs  can  befall.  30 

But  stay  !  but  stay !  methinks  my  sight. 

Better  informed  by  clearer  light, 

Discerns  sereneness  in  that  brow 

That  all  contracted  seem'd  but  now. 

His  revers'd  face  may  show  distaste,  35 

And  frown  upon  tlie  ills  are  past; 

But  that  which  this  way  looks  is  clear, 

And  smiles  upon  the  New-l)orn  Year. 

He  looks  too  from  a  place  so  high, 

The  year  lies  open  to  his  eye ;  ^Q 


38  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 


And  all  the  moments  open  are 
To  the  exact  discoverer. 
Yet  more  and  more  he  smiles  upon 
The  happy  revolution. 
5  AVhy  should  we  then  suspect  or  fear 

The  influences  of  a  year. 
So  smiles  upon  us  the  lirst  morn, 
And  speaks  us  good  so  soon  as  horn  ? 
Plague  ou't!  the  last  was  ill  enough, 

10  This  cannot  but  make  better  proof  ; 

Or,  at  the  worst,  as  we  brush'd  through 

The  last,  why  so  we  may  this  too  ; 

And  then  the  next  in  reason  shou'd 

Be  superexcellently  good : 
15  For  the  worst  ills  (we  daily  see) 

Have  no  more  perpetuity 

Than  the  best  fortunes  that  do  fall ; 

Which  also  bring  us  wherewithal 

Longer  their  being  to  support, 
20  Than  those  do  of  the  other  sort : 

And  who  has  one  good  year  in  three. 

And  yet  repines  at  destiny. 

Appears  ungrateful  in  the  case. 

And  merits  not  the  good  he  has. 
25  Then  let  us  welcome  the  New  Guest 

With  lusty  brimmers  of  the  best ; 

Mirth  always  should  Good  Fortune  meet, 

And  renders  e'en  Disaster  sweet: 

And  though  the  Princess  turn  her  back, 
30  Let  us  but  line  ourselves  with  sack. 

We  better  shall  by  far  hold  out, 

Till  the  next  Year  she  face  about. 

How  say  you,  Reader — do  not  tliese  verses  smack  of  the 
rough  magnanimity  of   the  old   Englisli   vein?     Do   they  not 

35  fortify  like  a  cordial ;  enlarging  the  heart,  and  productive  of 
sweet  blood,  and  generous  spirits,  in  the  concoction?  Where 
be  those  puling  fears  of  death,  just  now^  expressed  or  affected  ? 
—  Passed  like  a  cloud  —  absorbed  in  the  purging  sunlight  of 
clear  poetry — clean  washed  away  by  a  wave  of  genuine  Heli- 

40  con,  your  only  Spa"^  for  these  hypochondries.  And  now  another 
cup  of  the  generous  !  and  a  merry  Xew  Year,  and  many  of 
them,  to  yoLi  all,  my  masters  1 


MRS.    BATTLE'S    OPINIONS    ON    WHIST  39 


MRS.   BATTLE'S   OPINIO^N^S   OX  WHIST 

"  A  CLEAR  fire,  a  clean  hearth,  and  the  rigour  of  the  game." 
This  was  the  celebrated  u'lah  of  old  Sarah  Battle  (now  with 
God),  who,  next  to  her  devotions,  loved  a  good  game  at  whist. 
She  was  none  of  your  lukewarm  gamesters,  your  half-and-half 
players,  who  have  no  objection  to  take  a  hand,  if  you  want  one  5 
to  make  up  a  rubber;  who  affirm  that  they  have  no  pleasure 
in  winning;  that  they  like  to  win  one  game,  and  lose  another; 
that  they  can  while  away  an  hour  very  agreeably  at  a  card- 
table,  but  are  indifferent  whether  they  play  or  no ;  and  will 
desire  an  adversary,  who  has  slipped  a  wrong  card,  to  take  it  10 
up  and  play  another.  These  insufferable  triflers  are  the  curse 
of  a  table.  One  of  these  flies  will  spoil  a  whole  pot.  Of  such 
it  may  be  said  that  they  do  not  play  at  cards,  but  only  play  at 
playing  at  them. 

Sarah  Battle  was  none  of   that  breed.     She  detested  them,  15 
as  I  do,  from  her  heart  and  soul ;  and  would  not,  save  upon  a 
striking  emergency,  willingly  seat  herself  at  the   same  table 
with  them.     She  loved  a  thorough-paced  partner,  a  determined 
enemy.     She  took,  and  gave,  no  concessions.     She  hated  favours. 
She  never  made  a  revoke,  nor  ever  passed  it  over  in  her  adver-  20 
sary  without  exacting  the  utmost  forfeiture.      She   fought  a 
good  fight :  cut  and  thrust.     She  held  not  her  good  sword  (her 
cards)  "like  a  dancer."       She  sate  bolt  upright;  and  neither 
showed  you  her  cards,  nor  desired  to  see  yours.     All  people 
have  their  blind  side  —  their  superstitions;  and  I  have  heard 25 
her  declare,  under  the  rose,  that  Hearts  was  her  favourite  suit. 

I  never  in  my  life  —  and  I  knew"  Sarah  Battle  many  of  the 
best  years  of  it — saw  her  take  out  her  snuff-box  when  it  was 
her  turn  to  play;  or  snuff  a  candle  in  the  middle  of  a  game; 
or  ring  for  a  servant,  till  it  was  fairly  over.  She  never  intro-  30 
duced,  or  connived  at,  miscellaneous  conversation  during  its 
process.  As  she  emphatically  observed,  cards  were  cards ;  and 
if  I  ever  saw  unmingled  distaste  in  lier  fine  last-century  counte- 
nance, it  was  at  the  airs  of  a  young  gentleman  of  a  literary 
turn,  who  had  been  w'ith  difficulty  persuaded  to  take  a  hand;  35 
and  who,  in  his  excess  of  candour,  declared,  that  he  thought 


40  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

there  was  no  harm  in  nnbending  the  mind  now  and  tlien,  after 
serious  studies,  in  recreations  of  that  kind  !  She  could  not  bear 
to  have  her  noble  occupation,  to  which  she  wound  up  her  facul- 
ties, considered  in  that  light.  It  was  her  business,  her  duty, 
5  the  thing  she  came  into  the  world  to  do,  —  and  she  did  it.  She 
unbent  her  mind  afterwards  —  over  a  book. 

Pope*^  was  her  favourite  author :  his  Rape  of  the  Lock  her 
favourite  work.  She  once  did  me  the  favour  to  play  over  with 
me   (with  the  cards)  his  celebrated  game  of  Ombre  in  that 

10 poem;  and  to  explain  to  me  how  far  it  agreed  with,  and  in 
what  points  it  would  be  found  to  differ  from,  tradrille.  Her 
illustrations  were  apposite  and  poignant;  and  I  had  the  pleas- 
ure of  sending  the  substance  of  them  to  Mr.  Bowles^ ;  but  I 
suppose  they  came  too  late  to  be  inserted  among  his  ingenious 

15  notes  upon  that  author. 

Quadrille,  she  has  often  told  me,  was  her  first  love ;  but 
wlust  had  engaged  her  maturer  esteem.  The  former,  she  said, 
was  showy  and  specious,  and  likely  to  allure  young  persons. 
The  uncertainty  and  quick  shifting  of  partners  —  a  thing  which 

20  the  constancy  of  whist  abhors  ;  the  dazzling  supremacy  and  regal 
investiture  of  Spadille"^  —  absurd,  as  she  justly  observed,  in  the 
pure  aristocracy  of  wdiist,  where  his  crown  and  garter  give  him 
no  proper  power  above  his  brother-nobility  of  the  Aces ;  —  the 
giddy  vanity,  so  taking  to  the  inexperienced,  of  playing  alone ;  — 

25  above  all,  the  overpowering  attractions  of  a  Sans  Prendre  VoIe° 
—  to  the  triumph  of  which  there  is  certainly  nothing  parallel 
or  approaching,  in  the  contingencies  of  whist ;  —  all  these,  she 
would  say,  make  quadrille  a  game  of  captivation  to  the  young 
and  enthusiastic.     But  whist  was  the  solider  game :  that  was 

30  her  word.  It  was  a  long  meal ;  not,  like  quadrille,  a  feast  of 
snatches.  One  or  two  rubbers  might  coextend  in  duration  with 
an  evening.  They  gave  time  to  form  rooted  friendships,  to  cul- 
tivate steady  enmities.  She  despised  the  chance-started,  capri- 
cious, and  ever-fluctuating  alliances  of  the  other.    The  skirmishes 

35  of  quadrille,  she  would  say,  reminded  her  of  the  petty  ephemeral 
embroilments  of  the  little  Italian  states,  depicted  by  Machiavel°  : 
]ierpetually  changing  postures  and  connexions;  bitter  foes  to- 
day, sugared  darlings  to-morrow ;  kissing  and  scratching  in  a 
breath ;  —  but  the  wars  of  whist  were  comparable  to  the  long. 


iMES.    BATTLE'S    OPINIONS    ON    WHIST  41 

steady,  deep-rooted,  rational  antipathies  of  the  great  French  and 
English  nations. 

A  grave  simplicity  was  what  she  chiefly  admired  in  her 
favourite  game.  There  was  nothing  silly  in  it,  like  the  nob  in 
cribbage  —  nothing  superfluous.  No  flushes  —  that  most  irra-  5 
tional  of  all  pleas  that  a  reasonable  being  can  set  up:  —  that 
any  one  should  claim  four  by  virtue  of  holding  cards  of  the 
same  mark  and  colour,  without  reference  to  the  playing  of  the 
game,  or  the  individual  worth  or  pretensions  of  the  cards  them- 
selves !  She  held  this  to  be  a  solecism  ;  as  pitiful  an  ambition  10 
at  cards  as  alliteration  is  in  authorship.  She  despised  super- 
ficiality, and  looked  deeper  than  the  colours  of  things.  —  Suits 
were  soldiers,  she  would  say,  and  must  have  a  uniformity  of 
array  to  distinguish  them  :  but  what  should  we  say  to  a  foolish 
squire,  who  should  claim  a  merit  from  dressing  up  his  tenantry  15 
in  red  jackets,  that  never  were  to  be  marshalled  —  never  to  take 
the  field?  —  She  even  wished  that  whist  were  more  simple  than 
it  is ;  and,  in  my  mind,  would  have  stripped  it  of  some  append- 
ages, which,  in  the  state  of  human  frailty,  may  be  venially,  and 
even  commendably,  allowed  of.  She  saw  no  reason  for  the  de-  20 
ciding  of  the  trump  by  the  turn  of  the  card.  Why  not  one  suit 
always  trumps? —  Why  two  colours,  when  the  mark  of  the  suits 
would  have  sufficiently  distinguished  them  without  it? 

"  But  the  eye,  my  dear  Madam,  is  agreeably  refreshed  with 
the  variety.     Man  is  not  a  creature  of  pure  reason  —  he  must  25 
have  his  senses  delightfully  appealed  to.     We  see  it  in  Koman 
Catholic  countries,  where  the  music  and  the  paintings  draw  in 
many  to  worship,  whom  your  quaker  spirit  of  unsensualising 
would  have  kept  out.  —  You,  yourself,  have  a  pretty  collection 
of  paintings  —  but  confess  to  me,  whether,  walking  in   your  30 
gallery  at  Sandham,  among  those  clear  Vandykes, °  or  among 
the  Paul  Potters°  in  the  ante-room,  you  ever  felt  your  bosom 
glow  with  an  elegant  delight,  at  all  comparable  to  that  you  have 
it  in  your  power  to  experience  most  evenings  over  a  well-arranged 
assortment  of  the  court-cards?  —  the  pretty  antic  habits,  like  35 
heralds  in  a  procession — the  gay  triumph -assuring  scarlets  — 
the  contrasting  deadly-killing  sables  —  the  'hoary  majesty  of 
spades  ' —  Parn°  in  all  his  glory !  — 

"All  these  might  be  dispensed  with;  and  with  their  naked 


42  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

names  upon  the  drab  pasteboard,  the  game  might  go  on  very 
well,  pictureless ;  but  the  heauty  of  cards  would  be  extinguished 
for  ever.  Stripped  of  all  that  is  imaginative  iu  them,  they  must 
degenerate  into  mere  gambling.  —  Imagine  a  dull  deal  board, 
5  or  drum  head,  to  spread  them  on,  instead  of  that  nice  verdant 
carpet  (next  to  nature's),  fittest  arena  for  those  courtly  comba- 
tants to  play  their  gallant  jousts  and  turner's  in!  —  Exchange 
those  delicately-turned  ivory  markers  —  (work  of  Chinese 
artist,  unconscious  of  their  symbol,  —  or  as  profanely  slighting 

10  their  true  application  as  the  arrantest  Ephesian  journeyman 
that  turned  out  those  little  shrines  for  the  goddess)  —  exchange 
them  for  little  bits  of  leather  (our  ancestors'  money),  or  chalk 
and  a  slate  !  "  — 

The  old  lady,  with  a  smile,  confessed  the  soundness  of  my 

15  logic;  and  to  her  approbation  of  my  arguments  on  her  favourite 
topic  that  evening  1  have  always  fancied  myself  indebted  for  the 
legacy  of  a  curious  cribbage-board.  made  of  the  finest  Sienna 
marble,  which  her  maternal  uncle  (old  Walter  Plunier,°  whom 
I  have  elsewhere  celebrated)  brought  with  him  from  Florence  : 

20  —  this,  and  a  trifle  of  five  hundred  pounds,  came  to  me  at  her 
death. 

The  former  bequest  (which  I  do  not  least  value)  I  have  kept 
with  religious  care  ;  though  she  herself,  to  confess  a  truth,  was 
never  greatly  taken  with  cribbage.     It  was  an  essentially  vulgar 

25  game,  I  have  heard  her  say,  —  disputing  with  her  uncle,  who 
was  very  partial  to  it.  She  could  never  heartily  bring  her 
mouth  to  pronounce  "  Go"  or  '•  Thafs  a  go.''  She  called  it  an 
ungrammatical  game.  The  pegging  teased  her.  I  once  knew 
her  to  forfeit  a  rubber  (a  five-dollar  stake),  because  she  would 

30  not  take  advantage  of  the  turn-up  knave,  which  would  have 
given  it  her,  but  which  she  must  have  claimed  by  the  disgrace- 
ful tenure  of  declaring  '-two  for  his  heeU."  There  is  something 
extremely  genteel  in  this  sort  of  seK-denial.  Sarah  Battle  was 
a  gentlewoman  born. 

35  Piquet  she  held  the  best  game  at  the  cards  for  two  persons, 
though  she  would  ridicule  the  pedantry  of  the  terms  —  such  as 
pique  —  repique — the  capot — they  savoured  (she  thought)  of 
affectation.  But  games  for  two,  or  even  three,  she  never  greatly 
cared  for.     She  loved  the  quadrate,  or  square.    She  would  argue 


3IBS.    BATTLE'S    OPINWXS    OX    VmiST  43 

thus  : —  Cards  are  warfare  :  the  ends  are  gain,  with  glory.  But 
cards  are  war,  in  disguise  of  a  sport :  when  single  adversaries 
encounter,  the  ends  proposed  are  too  palpable.  By  themselves, 
it  is  too  close  a  fight;  with  spectators,  it  is  not  much  bettered. 
N'o  looker  on  can  be  interested,  except  for  a  bet,  and  then  it  is  a  5 
mere  affair  of  money ;  he  cares  not  for  your  luck  sipvpatheticall//, 
or  for  your  play.  —  Three  are  still  worse  ;  a  mere  naked  war  of 
every  man  against  every  man,  as  in  cribbage,  without  league  or 
alliance ;  or  a  rotation  of  l)6tty  and  contradictory  interests,  a 
succession  of  heartless  leagues,  and  not  much  more  hearty  10 
infractions  of  them,  as  in  tradrille.  —  But  in  square  games  (she 
meant  ichist),  all  that  is  possible  to  be  attained  in  card-playing 
is  accomplished.  There  are  the  incentives  of  profit  with 
honour,  common  to  every  species  —  though  the  latter  can  be 
but  very  imperfectly  enjoyed  in  those  other  games,  where  the  15 
spectator  is  only  feebly  a  participator.  But  the  parties  in  whist 
are  spectators  and  principals  too.  They  are  a  theatre  to  them- 
selves, and  a  looker  on  is  not  wanted.  He  is  rather  worse  than 
nothing,  and  an  impertinence.  Whist  abhors  neutrality,  or 
interests  beyond  its  sphere.  You  glory  in  some  surprising  20 
stroke  of  skill  or  fortune,  not  because  a  cold  —  or  even  an  inter- 
ested —  bystander  witnesses  it,  but  because  your  partner  sym- 
pathises in  the  contingency.  You  win  for  two.  You  triumph 
for  two.  Two  are  exalted.  Two  again  are  mortified ;  which 
divides  their  disgrace,  as  the  conjunction  doubles  (by  taking  25 
off  the  invidiousness)  your  glories.  Two  losing  to  two  are 
better  reconciled,  than  one  to  one  in  that  close  butchery.  The 
hostile  feeling  is  weakened  by  multiplying  the  channels.  War 
becomes  a  civil  game. —  By  such  reasonings  as  these  the  old 
lady  was  accustomed  to  defend  her  favourite  pastime.  30 

No  inducement  could  ever  prevail  upon  her  to  pl'ay  at  any 
game,  where  chance  entered  into  the  composition,  for  tio/Itint/. 
Chance,  she  would  argue  —  and  here  again,  admire  the  subtlety 
of  lier  conclusion! — chance  is  nothing,  but  where  something 
else  depends  upon  it.  It  is  obvious  that  cannot  be  ///or/y.  3.5 
What  rational  cause  of  exultation  could  it  give  to  a  man  to 
turn  up  size  ace  a  hundred  times  together  by  iiimself  ?  or  before 
spectators,  where  no  stake  was  depending? —  Make  a  lottery  of 
a  hundred  thousand  tickets  with  but  one  fortunate  number  — 


44  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

and  what  possible  principle  of  onr  nature,  except  stupid  won- 
derment, could  it  gratify  to  gain  that  number  as  many  times 
successively,  without  a  prize  ?  Therefore  she  disliked  tlie 
mixture  of  chance  in  backgammon,  w^here  it  was  not  played 
5  for  money.  She  called  it  foolish,  and  those  people  idiots,  who 
were  taken  with  a  lucky  hit  under  such  circumstances.  Games 
of  pure  skill  were  as  little  to  her  fancy.  Played  for  a  stake, 
they  were  a  mere  system  of  overreaching.  Played  for  glory, 
they  were  a  mere  setting  of  one  man's  wit,  —  his  memory,  or 

10  combination-faculty  rather  —  against  another's  ;  like  a  mock- 
engagement  at  a  review,  bloodless  and  profitless.  —  She  could 
not  conceive  a  game  wanting  the  spritely  infusion  of  chance, 
the  handsome  excuses  of  good  fortune.  Two  people  playing  at 
chess  in  a  corner  of  a  room,  whilst  whist  was  stirring  in  the 

15  centre,  would  inspire  her  with  insufferable  horror  and  ennui. 
Those  w^ell-cut  similitudes  of  Castles  and  Knights,  the  imagery 
of  the  board,  she  would  argue  (and  I  think  in  this  case  justly), 
were  entirely  misplaced  and  senseless.  Those  hardhead  con- 
tests can  in  no  instance  ally  with  the  fancy.     They  reject  form 

20  and  colour.  A  pencil  and  dry  slate  (she  used  to  say)  were  the 
jiroper  arena  for  such  combatants. 

To  those  puny  objectors  against  cards,  as  nurturing  the  bad 
passions,  she  would  retort,  that  man  is  a  gaming  animal.  He 
must   be    always   trying   to   get   the  better    in    something   or 

25  other  :  —  that  this  passion  can  scarcely  be  more  safely  expended 
than  upon  a  game  at  cards :  that  cards  are  a  temporary  illu- 
sion ;  in  truth,  a  mere  drama ;  for  we  do  but  jjlay  at  being 
mightily  concerned,  where  a  few  idle  shillings  are  at  stake,  yet, 
during  the  illusion,  we  are  as  mightily  concerned  as  those  whose 

30  stake  is  crowns  and  kingdoms.  They  are  a  sort  of  dream -fight- 
ing ;  much  ado,  great  battling,  and  little  bloodshed;  mighty 
means  for  disproportioned  ends ;  quite  as  diverting,  and  a 
great  deal  more  innoxious,  than  many  of  those  more  serious 
games  of  life,  which  men  play,  without  esteeming  them  to  be 

35  such.  — 

With  great  deference  to  the  old  lady's  judgment  on  these 
matters,  I  think  I  have  experienced  some  moments  in  my  life 
when  playing  at  cards  for  nothing  has  even  been  agreeable. 
When  I  a'm  in  sickness,  or  not  in  the  best  spirits,  I  sometimes 


A    CHAPTER    ON   EARS  45 

call  for  the  cards,  and  play  a  game  at  piquet  for  love  with  my 
cousin  Bridget  —  Bridget  'Elia.° 

1  grant  there  is  something  sneaking  in  it ;  but  with  a  tooth- 
ache,   or    a    sprained    ankle,  —  when   you    are    subdued   and 
humble,  —  you  are  glad  to  put  up  with  an  inferior  spring  of  5 
action. 

There  is  such  a  thing  in  nature,  I  am  convinced,  as  sick 
whist. 

I  grant  it  is  not  the  highest  style  of  man  —  I  deprecate  the 
manes  of  Sarah  Battle —  she  lives  not,  alas!  to  whom  I  should  10 
apologise.  — 

At  such  times,  those  tei^ms  which  my  old  friend  objected  to, 
come  in  as  something  admissible.  —  I  love  to  get  a  tierce  or  a 
quatorze,  though  they  mean  nothing.  I  am  subdued  to  an  in- 
ferior interest.     Those  shadows  of  winning  amuse  me.  15 

That  last  game  I  had  with  my  sweet  cousin  (I  capotted°  her) 
—  (dare  I  tell  thee,  how  foolish  I  am  ?)  —  I  wished  it  might  have 
lasted  for  ever,  though  we  gained  nothing,  and  lost  nothing, 
though  it  was  a  mere  shade  of  play :  I  would  be  content  to  go 
on  in  that  idle  folly  for  ever.  The  pipkin  should  be  ever  boil- 20 
ing,  that  was  to  prepare  the  gentle  lenitive  to  my  foot,  which 
Bridget  was  doomed  to  apply  after  the  game  was  over :  and,  as 
I  do  not  much  relish  appliances,  there  it  should  ever  bubble. 
Bridget  and  I  should  be  ever  playing." 


A   CHAPTER   ON    EARS 

I  HAVE  no  ear.  —  2.") 

Mistake  me  not.  Reader,  —  nor  imagine  that  I  am  by  nature 
destitute  of  those  exterior  twin  appendages,  hanging  ornaments, 
and  (architecturally  speaking)  handsome  volutes  to  the  human 
ca])ital.  Better  my  mother  had  never  borne  me.  —  I  am,  I  tliink, 
rather  delicately  than  copiously  provided  with  those  conduits ;  ;a) 
and  1  feel  no  disposition  to  envy  the  mule  for  his  plenty,  or  the 
mole  for  her  exactness,  in  those  ingenious  labyrinthine  inlets  — 
those  indispensalde  side-intelligencers. 

Neither  have  1  incurred,  or  done  anything  to  incur,  with  Dc- 


46  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

foe,°  that  hideous  disfigurement,  which  constrained  him  to  draw 
upon  assurance  —  to  feel  "  quite  unabashed,"  and  at  ease  upon 
that  article.  I  was  never,  I  thank  my  stars,  in  the  pillory  ;  nor, 
if  I  read  them  aright,  is  it  wdthin  the  compass  of  my  destiny, 
5  that  I  ever  should  be. 

When  therefore  I  say  that  I  have  no  ear,  you  will  understand 
me  to  mean  — for  music.  To  say  that  this  heart  never  melted 
at  the  concourse  of  sweet  sounds,  would  be  a  foul  self-libel.  — 
"  Water  parted  from  the  sea"  never  fails  to  move  it  strangely. 

10  So  does  "  In  infancy."  But  they  were  used  to  be  sung  at  her 
harpsichord  (the  old-fashioned  instrument  in  vogue  in  those 
days)  by  a  gentlewoman  — the  gentlest,  sure,  that  ever  merited 
the  appellation  —  the  sweetest — why  should  I  hesitate  to  name 
Mrs.  S ,  once  the  blooming  Fanny  Weatheral  of  the  Temple 

15  —  who  had  power  to  thrill  the  soul  of  Elia.  small  imp  as  he  was, 
even  in  his  long  coats ;  and  to  make  him  glow,  tremble,  and 
blush  with  a  passion,  that  not  faintly  indicated  the  day-spring 
of  that  absorbing  sentiment  which  was  afterwards  destined  to 
overwhelm  and  subdue  his  nature  quite,  for  Alice  W n.° 

20  I  even  think  that  sentimentally  I  am  disposed  to  harmony. 
But  organically  I  am  incapable  of  a  tune.  I  have  been  practis- 
ing "  God  save  the  King  "  all  ray  life  ;  whistling  and  humming 
of  it  over  to  myself  in  solitary  corners ;  and  am  not  yet  arrived, 
they  tell  me,  within  many  quavers  of  it.     Yet  hath  the  loyalty 

25  of  Elia  never  been  impeached. 

I  am  not  without  suspicion,  that  I  have  an  undeveloped  faculty 
of  music  within  me.  For  thrunnniug,  in  my  wild  way,  on  my 
friend  A.'s  piano,  the  other  morning,  while  he  was  engaged  in 
an  adjoining  parlour,  —  on  his  return  he  was  pleased  to  say,  "/?e 

30  thought  it  could  not  be  the  maid  !  "  On  his  first  surprise  at  hearing 
the  keys  touched  in  somewhat  an  airy  and  masterful  way,  not 
dreaming  of  me,  his  suspicions  had  lighted  on  Jenny.  But  a 
grace,  snatched  from  a  superior  refinement,  soon  convinced  him 
that  some  being  —  technically  perhaps  deficient,  but  higher  in- 

35  formed  from  a  principle  common  to  all  the  fine  arts  —  had 
swayed  the  keys  to  a  mood  which  Jenny,  with  all  her  (less  cul- 
tivated) enthusiasm,  could  never  have  elicited  from  them.  _  I 
mention  this  as  a  proof  of  my  friend's  penetration,  and  not  with 
any  view  of  disparaging  Jenny. 


A    CHAPTER    OX   EARS  47 

Scientifically  T  could  never  be  made  to  understand  (yet  have 
I  taken  some  pains)  what  a  note  in  music  is ;  or  how  one  note 
should  differ  from  another.  Much  less  in  voices  can  I  distin- 
guish a  soprano  from  a  tenor.  Only  sometimes  the  thorough- 
bass I  contrive  to  guess  at,  from  its  being  supereminently  harsh  5 
and  disagreeable.  I  tremble,  however,  for  my  misapplication  of 
the  simplest  terms  of  thit  which  I  disclaim.  While  I  profess 
my  ignorance,  I  scarce  know  what  to  say  I  am  ignorant  of.  I 
hate,  perhaps,  by  misnomers.  Sostenuto''  and  adagio°  stand  in 
the  like  relation  of  obscurity  to  me ;  and  Sol,  Fa,  Mi,  Re,  is  as  10 
conjuring  as  BaraUpton° 

It  is  hard  to  stand  alone  in  an  age  like  this,  —  (constituted 
to  the  quick  and  critical  perception  of  all  harmonious  combina- 
tions, I  verily  believe,  beyond  all  preceding  ages,  since  JubaP 
stumbled  upon  the  gamut)  —  to  remain,  as  it  were,  singly  un-  15 
impressible  to  the  magic  influences  of  an  art,  which  is  said  to 
have  such  an  especial  stroke  at  soothing,  elevating,  and  refining 
the  passions.  —  Yet,  rather  than  break  the  candid  current  of  my 
confessions,  I  must  avow  to  you  that  I  have  received  a  great 
deal  more  pain  than  pleasure  from  this  so  cried  up  faculty.  20 

I  am  constitutionally  susceptible  of  noises.  A  carpenter's 
hammer,  in  a  warm  summer  noon,  will  fret  me  into  more  than 
midsummer  madness.  But  those  unconnected,  unset  sounds, 
are  nothing  to  the  measured  malice  of  music.  The  ear  is  pas- 
sive to  those  single  strokes ;  willingly  enduring  stripes,  while  it  25 
hath  no  task  to  con.  To  miisic  it  cannot  be  passive.  It  will 
strive  —  mine  at  least  will  —  'spite  of  its  inaptitude,  to  thrid 
the  maze;  like  an  unskilled  eye  painfully  poring  upon  hiero- 
glyphics. I  have  sat  through  an  Italian  Opera,  till,  for  sheer  pain, 
and  inexplicable  anguish,  I  have  rushed  out  into  the  noisiest  30 
places  of  the  crowded  streets,  to  solace  myself  with  sounds, 
which  I  was  not  obliged  to  follow,  and  get  rid  of  the  distracting 
torment  of  endless,  fruitless,  barren  attention  I  I  take  refuge  in 
the  unpretending  assemblage  of  honest  common-life  sounds; 
—  and  the  purgatory  of  the  Enraged  Musician  becomes  my  35 
paradise. 

I  have  sat  at  an  Oratorio  (that  profanation  of  the  ])ur])Oses 
of  the  cheerful  playhouse)  watching  the  faces  of  tiie  auditory 
in  the  pit  (what  a  contrast  to  Hogarth's  Laughing  Audience!) 


48  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

immoveable,  or  affecting  some  faint  emotion — till  (as  some 
have  said,  that  our  occupations  in  the  next  world  will  be  but  a 
shadow  of  what  delighted  us  in  this)  I  have  imagined  myself  in 
some  cold  Theatre  in  Hades,'^  where  some  of  the  forms  of  the 
5  earthly  one  should  be  kept  up,  with  none  of  the  enjoyment ;  or 
like  that 


Party  in  a  parlour 


All  silent,  and  all  damned. ° 

Above  all,  those  insufferable  concertos,  and  pieces  of  music. 

10  as  they  are  called,  do  plague  and  embitter  my  apprehension.  — • 
Words  are  something;  but  to  be  exposed  to  an  endless  battery 
of  mere  sounds ;  to  be  long  adying°;  to  lie  stretched  upon  a 
rack  of  roses ;  to  keep  up  languor  by  unintermitted  effort ;  to 
pile  honey  upon  sugar,  and  sugar  upon  honey,  to  an  interminable 

15  tedious  sweetness ;  to  fill  up  sound  with  feeling,  and  strain 
ideas  to  keep  pace  with  it ;  to  gaze  on  empty  frames,  and  be 
forced  to  make  the  pictures  for  yourself ;  to  read  a  book,  all 
stops,  and  be  obliged  to  supply  the  verbal  matter;  to  invent 
extempore  tragedies  to  answer  to  the  vague  gestures  of  an  inex- 

20plicable  rambling  mime°  —  these  are  faint  shadows  of  what  T 
have  undergone  from  a  series  of  the  ablest-executed  pieces  of 
this  empty  instrumental  music. 

I  deny  not,  that  in  the  opening  of  a  concert,  I  have  experi- 
enced something  vastly  lulling    and    agreeable  :  —  afterwards 

25  foUoweth  the  languor  and  the  oppression.  — ■  Like  that  dis- 
appointing book  in  Patmos° ;  or,  like  the  comings  on  of 
melancholy,  described  by  Burton,  doth  music  make  her  first 
insinuating  approaches:  —  "Most  pleasant  it  is  to  such  as  are 
melancholy  given,  to  walk  alone  in  some  solitary  grove,  betwixt 

30  wood  and  water,  by  some  brook  side,  and  to  meditate  upon 
some  delightsome  and  pleasant  subject,  which  shall  affect  him 
m.o.st,  amabilis  insania,  and  mentis  gratissimus  error.  A  most 
incomparable  delight  to  build  castles  in  tlie  air,  to  go  smiling 
to  themselves,  acting  an  infinite  variety  of  parts,  which  they 

35  suppose,  and  strongly  imagine,  they  act,  or  that  they  see  done.  — 
So  delightsome  these  toys  at  first,  they  could  spend  whole  days 
and  nights  without  sleep,  even  whole  years  in  such  contempla- 
tions,  and  fantastical    meditations,  which  are    like  so  many 


A    CHAPTER    ON    EARS  49 

dreams,  and  will  hardly  be  drawn  from  them  —  windmg  and 
unwinding  themselves  as  so  many  clocks,  and  still  pleasing 
their  humours,  until  at  the  last  the  scexe  turns  upox  a  sud- 
den, and  they  being  now  habitated  to  such  meditations  and  soli- 
tary places,  can  endure  no  company,  can  think  of  nothing  but  5 
harsh  and  distasteful  subjects.  Fear,  sorrow,  suspicion,  suhru- 
sticus  pudor°  discontent,  cares,  and  weariness  of  life,  surprise 
them  on  a  sudden,  and  they  can  think  of  nothing  else :  con- 
tinually suspecting,  no  sooner  are  their  eyes  open,  but  this  infer- 
nal plague  of  melancholy  seizeth  on  them,  and  terrifies  their  10 
souls,  representing  some  dismal  object  to  their  minds;  which 
now,  by  no  means,  no  labour,  no  persuasions  they  can  avoid, 
they  cannot  be  rid  of,  they  cannot  resist." 

Something  like  this  "  scene -ttrnixg  "  I  have  experienced 
at  the  evening  parties,  at  the  house  of  my  good  Catholic  friend  15 

Nov ;  who,  by  the  aid  of  a  capital  organ,  himself  the  most 

finished  of  players,  converts  his  drawing-room  into  a  chapel,  his 
week  days  into  Sundays,  and  these  latter  into  minor  heavens.^ 

When  my  friend  commences  upon  one  of  those  solemn 
anthems,  which  peradventure  struck  upon  my  heedless  ear,  20 
rambling  in  the  side  isles  of  the  dim  Abbey,  some  five  and  thirty 
years  since,  waking  a  new  sense,  and  putting  a  soul  of  old 
religion  into  my  young  apprehension —  (whether  it  be  that°  in 
which  the  Psalmist,  weary  of  the  persecutions  of  bad  men, 
wisheth  to  himself  dove's  wings — or  that  oilier  °  which,  with  a  25 
like  measure  of  sobriety  and  pathos,  inquireth  by  what  means 
the  young  man  shall  best  cleanse  his  mind)  —  a  holy  calm  per- 
vadeth  me.  —  I  am  for  the  time 

rapt  above  earth. 

And  possess  joys  not  promised  at  my  birth.  30 

But  when  this  master  of  the  spell,  not  content  to  have  laid  a 
soul  prostrate,  goes  on,  in  his  power,  to  inflict  more  bliss  than 
lies  in  her  capacity  to  receive  —  impatient  to  overcome  her 
"earthly"  with  his  "heavenly,"  —  still  pouring  in,  for  pro- 
tracted hours,  fresh  waves  and  fresh  from  the  sea  of  sound,  or  35 

1 1  have  been  there,  and  still  would  go  — 
"lis  like  a  little  heaveu  below.  —  Dr.  Watts. 


.-.()  TllK    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

from  tliat  ijiMxhau.^ttvl  fj'rrmnn  oceau,  above  which,  in  tvium- 
pliant  ]>roffress.  dolphin-seated,  ride  those  Arions^  Haydn  and 
Afoznrf.'  with  their  attendant  Tritons,"  Bach,  B<;ethoven°  and  a 
countless  trihe.  whom  to  attempt  to  reckon  up  would  but  plunge 
Ti  ine  aj?ain  in  the  deeps,  —  I  stagger  under  the  weight  of  har- 
mony, reeling  to  and  fro  at  m\  wits'  end:  —  clouds,  as  of  frank- 
ini'eiise,  oppress  nie  —  prie^*ts,  altars,  censers,  dazzle  before  nie  — 
the  genius  of  hix  religion  hath  me  in  her  toils — a  shadowy 
triple  tiara"^  invests  the  brow  of  my  friend,  late  so  naked,  so 

10  ingenuous — he  is  Pope. —  and  by  him  sits,  like  as  in  the  anom- 
aly of  drnams,  a  she-Po[>e  too.  —  tri-coronated  like  himself  !  — 
I  am  converted,  and  yet  a  l^rotestant ;  —  at  once  malleus  hereti- 
roru/N,^  and  myself  grand  heresiarch^:  or  three  heresies  centre 
in  my  ]^rson  :  —  I  am  Marcion,°  Ebion,°  and  Cerinthus"^  —  Gog 

If) and  Nlagog^ — what  not? — till  the  coming  in  of  the  friendly 
supper-tray  dissipates  the  iignient,  and  a  draught  of  true  Lu- 
tht^ran  beer  (in  which  chietiy  my  friend  shows  himself  no  bigot) 
at  once  reconciles  me  to  the  rationalities  of  a  purer  faith;  and 
restores  to  me  the  genuine  unt-errifying  aspects  of  my  pieasaiit- 

20  couutenanced  host  and  hostess. 


ALL   FOOLS'   DAY 

TirK  compliments  of  the  season  to  my  worthy  masters,  and 
a  m»MTy  first  of  April  to  us  all ! 

Many  iuippy  returns  of  this  day  to  you  —  and  you  —  and  you. 
Sir  — nay.  never  frown,   man,  nor  put  a  long 'face  upon  the 

•J.*!  matter.  Do  not  we  know  one  another?  what  need  of  ceremony 
among  friends?  we  have  all  a  touch  of  that  same  —  you  under- 
stand me  — a  si.>eck  of  the  motley.  Beshrew  the  man  who  on 
such_  a  day  as  this,  the  general  festival,  should  affect  to  stand 
aloof.     I  am  none  of  those  sneakers.     I  am  free  of  the  corpora- 

aotion,  and  care  not  who  knows  it.  lie  that  meets  me  in  the 
forest  today,^  shall  meet  with  no  wise-acre,  I  can  tell  him. 
^tultus  sum.''     Translate  me  that,  and  take  the  meanino-  of  it 


ALL    FOOLS'    DAY  51 

to  yourself  for  your  pains.     What  I  mau,  we  have  four  quarters 
of  the  globe  on  our  side,  at  the  least  computation. 

Fill  us  a  cup  of  that  sparkling  gooseberry  ■ —  we  Mill  drink 
no  wise,  melancholy,  politic  port  on  this  day — and  let  us  troll 
the  catch°  of  Amiens  — due  ad  me  —  due  ad  me  —  how  goes  it? 5 

Here  shall  he  see 
Gross  fools  as  he. 

Now  would  I  give  a  trifle  to  know,  historically  and  authenti- 
cally, who  was  the  greatest  fool  that  ever  lived.      I  would  cer- 
tainly give  him°  in  a  bumper.      Marry,  of  the  present  breed,  10 
I  think  I  could  without  much  difficulty  name  you  the  party. 

Remove  your  cap  a  little  further,  if  you  please :  it  hides  my 
bauble.  And  now  each  man  bestride  his  hobby,  and  dust 
away°  his  bells  to  what  tune  he  pleases.  I  will  give  you,  for 
my  part,  1.^ 

The  crazy  old  church  clock, 

And  the  bewildered  chimes. 

Good  master  Empedocles,^  you  are  welcome.     It  is  long  since 
you  went  a  salamander-gathering  down  ^Etna.     Worse  than 
samphire-picking  by  some   odds.     'Tis  a  mercy  your  worship  20 
did  not  siuge  your  mustachios. 

Ha !  Cleombrotus  - 1  and  what  salads  in  faith  did  you  light 
upon  at  the  bottom  of  the  Mediterranean  V  You  were  founder, 
I  take  it,  of  the  disinterested  sect  of  the  Calenturists.° 

Gebir,^  my  old  freemason,  and  prince  of  plasterers  at  Babel,  25 
bring  in  jomx  trow^el,  most  Ancient  Grand !  You  have  claim 
to  a  seat  here  at  my  right  hand,  as  patron  of  the  stammerers. 
You  left  your  work,  if  1  remember  Herodotus  correct!)-,  at  eight 
hundred  million  toises,  or  thereabout,  above  the  level  of  the 
sea.     Bless  us,  what  a  long  bell  you  must  have  pulled,  to  call  30 

1 He  who.  to  be  deem'd 


A  god,  leap'd  fondly  into  .Etna  flames  — 

2 He  who,  to  enjoy 

Plato's  Elysium,  leap'd  into  the  sea  — 

3  The  builders  next  of  Babel  on  the  plain 
Of  Senaar  — 


52  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

vour  top  workmen  to  their  niincheon  on  the  low  grounds  of 
Shiiiar.  Or  did  you  send  up  your  garlic  and  onions  by  a  rocket? 
I  am  a  rogue  if  I  am  not  ashamed  to  show  you  our  ]\Ionumenton 
Fish-street  Hill,  after  your  altitudes.  Yet  we  think  it  somewhat. 
5  What,  the  magnanimous  Alexander  in  tears  ?— cry,  baby, 
put  its  finger  in  its  eye,  it  shall  have  another  globe,  round  as 
an  orange,  pretty  moppet ! 

Mister  Adams 'odso,  I  honour  your  coat  —  pray  do  us 

the  favour  to  read  to  us  that  sermon,  which  you  lent  to  Mistress 

10  Slipslop  —  the  twent}^  and  second  in  your  portmanteau  there  — 
on  Female  Incontinence  —  the  same  —  it  will  come  in  most  irrel- 
evantly and  impertinently  seasonable  to  the  time  of  the  day. 

Good  Master  Raymund  Lully,°  you  look  wise.     Pray  correct 
that  error. 

15  Duns,°  spare  your  definitions.  1  must  fine  you  a  bumper,  or 
a  paradox.  We  will  have  nothing  said  or  done  syllogistically 
this  day.  Remove  those  logical  forms,  waiter,  that  no  gentle- 
man break  the  tender  shins  of  his  apprehension  stumbling  across 
them. 

20  Master  Stephen,''  you  are  late.  —  Ha!  Cokes,°  is  it  you?  — 
Aguecheek,°  my  dear  knight,  let  me  pay  my  devoir  to  you.  — 
Master  Shanow,°  your  worship's  poor  servant  to  command. 
—  Master  Silence,°  I  will  use  few  words  with  you.  —  Slender,° 
it  shall  go  hard  if  I  edge  not  you  in  somewhere.  —  You  six  will 

25  engross  all  the  poor  wit  of  the  company  to-day.  —  I  know  it,  I 
know  it.  ,  " 

Ha !    honest  R ,  my  fine  old  Librarian  of  Ludgate,  time 

out  of  mind,  art  thou  here  again  ?     Bless  thy  doublet,  it  is  not 
over-new,  threadbare  as  thy  stories  :  —  what  dost  thou  flitting 

30 about  the  world  at  this  rate?— Thy  customers  are  extinct, 
defunct,  bedrid,  have  ceased  to  read  long  ago.  —  Thoa  goest 
still  among  them,  seeing  if.  peradventure,  thou  canst  hawk  a 

volume   or   two.  — Good   Granville    S ,  thy  last   patron,  is 

liowu. 

35  Kinpc  Pandion,  he  is  dead, 

All  thy  friends  are  lapt  in  lead.— 

Nevertheless,  noble  R ,  come  in,  and  take  your  seat  here, 

between  Armado  and  Quisada^;  for  in  true  courtesy,  in  gravity, 


ALL   FOOLS'    DAY  53 

in  fantastic  smiling  to  thyself,  in  courteous  smiling  upon  others, 
in  the  goodly  ornatare  of  well-apparelled  speech,  and  the  com- 
mendation of  wise  sentences,  thou  art  nothing  inferior  to  those 
accomplished  Dons  of  Spain.  The  spirit  of  chivalry  forsake  me 
for  ever,  when  I  forget  thy  singing  the  song  of  Macheath,  which  5 
declares  that  he  might  be  happy  with  either,  situated  between 
those  two  ancient  spinsters  —  when  I  forget  the  inimitable 
formal  love  which  thou  didst  make,  turning  now  to  the  one,  and 
now  to  the  other,  with  that  Malvolian  smi]e° — as  if  Cervantes, 
not  Gay,°  had  written  it  for  his  hero ;  and  as  if  thousands  of  10 
periods  must  revolve,  before  the  mirror  of  courtesy  could  have 
given  his  invidious  preference  between  a  pair  of  so  goodl}^- 
propertied  and  meritorious-equal  damsels.     *     *     *     * 

To  descend  from  these  altitudes,  and  not  to  protract  our 
Fools'  Banquet  beyond  its  appropriate  day,  —  for  I  fear  the  15 
second  of  April  is  not  many  hours  distant  —  in  sober  verity  1 
will  confess  a  truth  to  thee.  Reader.  I  love  a  Fool  —  as  natu- 
rally as  if  I  were  of  kith  and  kin  to  him.  VA'hen  a  child,  wnth 
childlike  apprehensions,  that  dived  not  below  the  surface  of  the 
matter,  I  read  those  Parables  —  not  guessing  at  their  involved  20 
wisdom  —  I  had  more  yearnings  towards  that  simple  architect, 
that  built  his  house  upon  the  sand,  than  I  entertained  for  his 
more  cautious  neighbour  :  I  grudged  at  the  hard  censure  pro- 
nounced upon  the  quiet  soul  that  kept  his  talent ;  and  —  prizing 
their  simplicity  beyond  the  more  provident,  and,  to  my  appre-2o 
hension,  somewhat  unfeminine  wariness  of  their  competitors  — 
I  felt  a  kindliness,  that  almost  amounted  to  a  tendre,  for  those 
five  thoughtless  virgins.  —  I  have  never  made  an  acquaintance 
since,  that  lasted  :  or  a  friendship,  that  answered  ;  with  any 
tiiat  had  not  some  tincture  of  the  absurd  in  their  characters.  30 
I  venerate  an  honest  obliquity  of  understanding.  The  more 
laughable  blunders  a  man  shall  commit  in  your  company,  the 
more  tests  he  giveth  you,  that  he  will  not  betray  or  overreach 
you.  I  love  the  safety  which  a  palpable  hallucination  warrants ; 
the  security  which  a  word  out  of  season  ratifies.  And  take  my  35 
word  for  this,  Reader,  and  say  a  fool  told  it  you,  if  you  please, 
that  he  who  hath  not  a  dram  of  folly  in  his  mixture,  hath 
pounds  of  much  worse  matter  in  his  composition.  It  is  ob- 
served, that  "  the  foolisher  the  fowl  or  fish,  —  w'oodcocksj  — - 


54  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

dotterels, — cods '-heads,  etc.,  the  finer  the  flesh  thereof,"  and 
what  are  coimiioiily  the  world's  received  fools  but  such  whereof 
the  world  is  not  worthy?  and  what  have  been  some  of  the 
kindliest  patterns  of  our  species,  but  so  many  darlings  of 
5  absurdity,  niiuions  of  the  goddess,  and  her  w^hite  boys°? — ■ 
Reader,  if  you  wrest  my  words  beyond  their  fair  construction, 
it  is  you,  and  not  I,  that  are  the  April  Fool. 


A  QUAKERS'   MEETIXG 

Still-born  Silence !  thou  that  art 

Flood-gate  of  the  deeper  heart ! 
10  Offspring  of  a  heavenly  kind  ! 

Frost  o'  the  mouth,  and  thaw  o'  the  mind! 

Secrecy's  contidaut,  and  he 

Who  makes  religion  mystery ! 

Admiration's  speaking'st  tongue! 
15  Leave,  thy  desert  shades  among, 

Reverend  hermit's  hallowed  cells, 

AVhere  retired  devotion  dwells! 

With  thy  enthusiasms  come, 

Seize  our  tongues,  and  strike  us  dumb!  i 

'JO  Rk  ADER,  would'st  thou  know  what  true  p'=^ace  and  quiet  mean ; 
would'st  thou  find  a  refuge  from  the  noises  and  clamours  of  the 
multitude;  would'st  thou  enjoy  at  once  solitude  and  society; 
would'st  thou  possess  the  depth  of  thine  own  spirit  in  stillness, 
without  being  shut  out  from  the  consolatory  faces  of  thy  species ; 

2.")  would'st  thou  be  alone,  and  yet  accompanied  ;  solitary,  yet  not 
desolate ;  singular,  yet  not  without  some  to  keep  thee  in  counte- 
nance ;  a  unit  in  aggregate ;  a  simple  in  composite :  —  come 
Avitli  me  into  a  Quakers'  Meeting. 

Dost  thou  loA-e  silence  deep  as  that  "before  the  winds  were 

30  made"?  go  not  out  into  the  wilderness,  descend  not  into  the 
profundities  of  the  earth;  shut  not  up  thy  casements °;  nor 
pour  wax  into  the  little  cells  of  thy  ears,  wdth  little-faith'd  self- 
mistrusting  Ulysses.°  —  Retire  with  me  into  a  Quakers'  Meeting. 

1  From  "  Poems  of  all  sorts,"  by  Richard  Fleckno,  1653. 


A    QUAKERS'    MEETING  55 

For  a  man  to  refrain  even  from  good  words,  and  to  hold  his 
peace,  it  is  commendable  ;  but  for  a  multitude  it  is  great  mastery. 

What  is  the  stillness  of  the  desert,  compared  with  this  place? 
what  the  uncommunicating  muteness  of  fishes?  —  here  the  god- 
dess reigns  and  revels.  —  ''Boreas,  and  Cesias,  and  ArgestesS 
loud,"  do  not  with  their  in tercon founding  uproars  more  aug- 
ment the  brawl  —  nor  the  waves  of  the  blown  Baltic  with  their 
clubbed  sounds  —  than  their  opposite  (Silence  her  sacred  self) 
is  multiplied  and  rendered  more  intense  by  numl:)ers,  and  by 
sympatiiy.  She  too  hath  her  deeps,  that  call  unto  deeps.  Ne- 10 
gation  itself  hath  a  positive  more  and  less ;  and  closed  eyes 
w^ould  seem  to  obscure  the  great  obscurity  of  midnight. 

There  are  wounds  which  an  imperfect  solitude  cannot  heal. 
By  imperfect  T  mean  that  which  a  man  enjoyeth  by  himself. 
The  perfect  is  that  which  he  can  sometimes  attain  in  crowds,  lo 
but  nowdiere  so  absolutely  as  in  a  Quakers'  Meeting.  —  Those 
first  hermits  did  certainly  understand  this  principle,  when  they 
retired  into  Egyptian  solitudes,  not  singly,  but  in  shoals,  to  en- 
joy one  another's  want  of  conversation.      The  Carthusian^  is 
bound  to  his  brethren  by  this  agreeing  spirit  of  incommunica-  20 
tiveness.     In  secular  occasions,  what  so  pleasant  as  to  be  read- 
ing a  book  through  a  long  winter  evening,  with  a  friend  sitting 
by  —  say,  a  wife  —  he,  or  she,  too,  (if  that  be  probable)  reading 
another,  without  interruption,  or  oral  communication? — can 
there  be  no  sympathy  without  the  gabble  of  words  ?  —  away  25 
with  this  inhuman,  shy,  single,  shade-and-cavern-haunting  soli- 
tariness.   Give  me,  Master  Zimmerman,  a  sympathetic  solitude. 

To  pace  alone  in  the  cloisters  or  side  aisles  of  some  cathedral, 

time-stricken  ; 

Or  under  hanging  mountains,  30 

Or  by  the  fall  of  fountains ; 

is  but  a  vulgar  luxury,  compared  w-ith  that  which  those  enjoy 
who  come  together  for  the  purposes  of  more  complete,  ab- 
stracted solitude.  This  is  the  loneliness  "to  be  felt."  —  The 
Abbey  Church  of  Westminster  hath  nothing  so  solemn,  so  spirit  35 
soothing,  as  the  naked  w^alls  and  benches  of  a  Quakers'  Meet- 
ing.    Here  are  no  tombs,  no  inscriptions, 

sands,  ignoble  things, 


Dropt  from  the  ruined  sides  of  kings  — 


56  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

but  here  is  something  which  throws  AntiquitTv^  herself  into  the 
fore  ground— Silence  — eldest  of  things  —  language  of  old 
Night  —  primitive  discourser  —  to  which  the  insolent  decays 
of  niouldering  grandeur  have  but  arrived  by  a  violent,  and,  as 
5  we  may  say,  unnatural  progression. 

How  reverend  is  the  view  of  these  hushed  heads, 
Looking  tranquillity ! 

Xothing-plotting,  nought-caballing,  unmischievous  synod ! 
convocation    without    intrigue !    parliament    without    debate  I 

10  wliat  a  lesson  dost  thou  read  to  council,  and  to  consistory !  — 
if  my  }^n  treat  of  you  lightly  —  as  haply  it  will  wander  —  yet 
my  spirit  hath  gravely  felt  the  wisdom  of  your  custom,  when, 
sitting  aunmg  you  in  deepest  peace,  which  some  outwelling  tears 
would  rather  confirm  than  disturb,  I  have  reverted  to  the  tiuies 

li  of -your  beginnings,  and  the  sowings  of  the  seed  by  Fox°  and 
Dewesbury. —  I  have  witnessed  that  which  brought  before  my 
eyes  your  heroic  tranquillity,  inflexible  to  the  rude  jests  and  seri- 
ous violences  of  the  insolent  soldiery,  republican  or  royalist,  sent 
to  molest  you  —  for  ye  sate  betwixt  the  tires  of  two  persecutions, 

20  the  outcast  and  otf-scouring  of  church  and  presbytery.  —  I  have 
.st'en  the  reeling  sea-ruffian,  who  had  wandered  into  your  re- 
ceptacle with  the  avowed  intention  of  disturbing  your  quiet, 
from  the  very  spirit  of  the  place  receive  in  a  mon'ient  a  new 
heart,  and  presently  sit  among  ye  as  a  lamb  amidst  lambs. 

2.5  .Viid  I  remembered  Penn''  before  his  accusers,  and  Fox  in  the 

bailnlock,  where  he  was  lifted  up  in  spirit,  as  he  tells  ns.  and 

"the  Judge  and  the  Jury  became  as  dead  men  under  his  feet." 

Krader.  if  you  are  not  acquainted  with  it.  I  would  recommend 

to  you,  above  all  church-narratives,  to  read  Sewel's  Historv  of 

.W  the  Quakers.  It  is  in  folio,  and  is  the  abstract  of  the  journals 
of  Fox,  and  the  primitive  Friends.  It  is  far  more  edifving  and 
affecting  than  anything  you  will  read  of  Wesley  °  and'  his  col- 
leagues. Here  Ls  nothing  to  stagger  you,  notiiing  to  make  vou 
mistrust,  no  suspicion  of  alloy,  no  drop  or  dreg  of  the  worldly 

35  or  ambitioji^  spirit.  You  will  here  read  the  true  story  of  that 
much-injured,  ridiculed  man  (who  perhaps  hath  been  a  byword 
in  x,,..r  niuuthj  —  JamesXaylor:  what  dreadful  sufferings,  with 


A    QUAKERS'    MEETING  57 

what  patience,  he  endured,  even  to  the  boring  through  of  his 
tongue  with  red-hot  irons,  without  a  murmur ;  and  with  what 
strength  of  mind,  when  the  delusion  he  had  fallen  into,  which 
they  stiguiatised  for  blasphemy,  had  given  way  to  clearer 
thoughts,  he  could  renounce  his  error,  in  a  strain  of  the  beauti-  5 
fullest  humilit}^  yet  keep  his  first  grounds,  and  be  a  Quaker 
still!  —  so  different  from  the  practice  of  your  common  converts 
from  enthusiasm,  who,  when  they  apostatize,  apostatize  all,  and 
think  they  can  never  get  far  enough  from  the  society  of  their 
former  errors,  even  to  the  renunciation  of  some  saving  truths,  10 
with  which  they  had  been  mingled,  not  implicated. 

Get  the  writings  of  John  Woolman°  by  heart ;  and  love  the 
early  Quakers. 

How  far  the  followers  of  these  good  men  in  our  days  have 
kept  to  the  primitive  spirit,  or  in  what  proportion  they  have  15 
substituted  formality  for  it,  the  Judge  of  Spirits  can  alone  de- 
termine. I  have  seen  faces  in  their  assemblies,  upon  which  the 
dove  sate  visibly  brooding.  Others,  again.  1  have  watched,  when 
m}^  thoughts  should  have  been  better  engaged,  in  which  I  could 
possibly  detect  nothing  but  a  blank  inanity.  But  quiet  was  in  20 
all,  and  the  disposition  to  unanimit}^,  and  the  absence  of  the 
fierce  controversial  workings.  —  If  the  spiritual  pretensions  of 
the  Quakers  have  abated,  at  least  they  make  few  pretences. 
Hypocrites  they  certainly  are  not,  in  their  preaching.  It  is 
seldom,  indeed,  that  you  shall  see  one  get  up  amongst  them  to  25 
hold  forth.  Only  now  and  then  a  trembling,  female,  generally 
ancient,  voice  Is  heard  —  you  cannot  guess  from  what  part  of 
the  meeting  it  proceeds  —  with  a  low,  buzzing,  musical  sound, 
laying  out  a  few  words  which  "  she  thought  might  suit  the  con- 
dition of  some  present,"  with  a  quaking  diffidence,  which  leaves  :jo 
no  possibility  of  supposing  that  anything  of  female  vanity  was 
mixed  up,  where  the  tones  were  so  full  of  tenderness,  and  a 
restraining  modest^^  —  The  men,  for  what  I  have  observed, 
speak  seldomer. 

Once  only,  and  it  was  some  years  ago,  I  witnessed  a  sample  35 
of  the  old  Foxian  orgasm.°     It  was  a  man  of  giant  stature,  who, 
as  Wordsworth  phrases  it,  might  have  danced  -from  head  to 
foot  equipt  in  iron  mail."     His  frame  was  of  iron  too.     But  he 
was  malleable.     I  saw  him  shake  all  over  with  the  spirit  —  I 


58  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

dare  not  say,  of  delusion.  The  strivings  of  tiie  outer  man  were 
unutterable  — he  seemed  not  to  speak,  but  to  be  spoken  from. 
\  saw  the  strong  man  bowed  down,  and  his  knees  to  fail — his 
joints  all  seemed  loosening  —  it  was  a  figure  to  set  off  against 
.1  Paul  Preaching — the  words  he  uttered  were  few,  and  sound  — 
he  was  evidently  resisting  his  will  —  keeping  down  his  own 
word-wisdom  with  more  mighty  effort  than  the  world's  orators 
strain  for  theirs.  "  He  had  been  a  wit  in  his  youth,"  he  told 
us,  with  expressions  of  a  sober  remorse.     And  it  was  not  till 

10  long  after  the  impression  had  begnn  to  wear  away,  that  I  was 
enabled,  with  something  like  a  smile,  to  recall  the  striking 
incongruity  of  the  confession  —  understanding  the  term  in  its 
worldly  acceptation  —  with  the  frame  and  physiognomy  of  the 
person    before   me.     His   brow   would   have   scared   away  the 

15  Levities  —  the  Jocos  Risus-que  —  faster  than  the  Loves  fled 
the  face  of  Dis°  at  Enna.  —  By  wit,  even  in  his  youth,  I  will  be 
sworn  he  understood  something  far  within  the  limits  of  an 
allowable  liberty. 

More  frequently  the  Meeting  is  broken  up  withont  a  word 

20  having  been  spoken.  But  the  mind  has  been  fed.  You  go 
away  with  a  sermon  not  made  with  hands.  You  have  been  in 
the  milder  caverns  of.  Trophonius^ ;  or  as  in  some  den,  where 
that  fiercest  and  savagest  of  all  wild  creatures,  the  Tongue, 
that  unruly  member,  has  strangely  lain  tied  up  and  captive. 

2.")  You  have  bathed  with  stillness.  —  O,  when  the  spirit  is  sore 
fretted,  even  tired  to  sickness  of  the  janglings  and  nonsense- 
noises  of  the  world,  what  a  balm  and  a  solace  it  is  to  go  and 
.seat  yourself  for  a  quiet  half-hour  upon  some  undisputed  corner 
of  a  bench,  among  the  gentle  Quakers ! 

30  Their  garb  and  stillness  conjoined,  present  a  uniformity, 
tranquil  and  herd-like  —  as  in  the  pasture  —  "  fortv  feeding 
like  one."  — 

The  very  garments  of  a  Quaker  seem  incapable  of  receiving 
a  soil ;  and  cleanliness  in  them  to  be  something  more  than  the 

3.5  absence  of  its  contrary.  Every  Quakeress  is  a  lily ;  and  when 
they  come  up  in  bands  to  their  Whitsun°  conferences,  whiten- 
ing the  easterly  streets  of  the  metropolis,  from  all  parts  of  the 
United  Kingdom,  they  show  like  troops  of  the  Shining  Ones.*" 


THE    OLD    AND    THE    NEW   SCHOOLMASTER 


THE   OLD   AND   THE   NEW   SCHOOLMASTER 

My  reading  has  been  lamentably  desultory  and  imniethodical. 
Odd,  out  of  the  way,  old  English  plays,  and  treatises,  have  sup- 
plied nie  with  most  of  my  notions,  and  ways  of  feeling.  In 
everything  that  relates  to  science,  I  am  a  whole  Encyclopaedia 
behind  the  rest  of  the  world.  I  should  have  scarcely  cut  a  fig-  5 
ure  among  the  franklins,  or  country  gentlemen,"  in  King  John's 
days.  I  know  less  geography  than  a  schoolboy  of  six  weeks' 
standing.  To  me  a  map  of  old  Ortelius°  is  as  authentic  as 
Arrowsmith.  I  do  not  know  whei'eabout  Africa  merges  into 
Asia;  whether  Ethiopia  lie  in  one  or  other  of  those  great  divi-  IG 
sions ;  nor  can  form  the  remotest  conjecture  of  the  position  of 
New  South  Wales,  or  Van  Diemen's  Land.  Yet  do  I  hold  a 
correspondence  with  a  very  dear  friend  in  the  first-named  of 
these  two  Terrse  Incognitt^.  I  have  no  astronomy.  I  do  not 
know  where  to  look  for  the  Bear,  or  Charles's  AVain ;  the  place  15 
of  any  star ;  or  the  name  of  any  of  them  at  sight.  I  guess  at 
Venus  only  by  her  brightness  —  and  if  the  sun  on  some  porten- 
tous morn  were  to  make  his  first  appearance  in  the  West,  I  verily 
believe,  that,  while  all  the  world  were  gasping  in  apprehension 
about  me,  I  alone  should  stand  unterrified,  from  sheer  incuri-  20 
osity  and  w^ant  of  observation.  Of  history  and  chronology  I 
possess  some  vague  points,  such  as  one  cannot  help  picking  up 
in  the  course  of  miscellaneous  study ;  but  I  never  deliberately 
sat  down  to  a  chronicle,  even  of  my  own  country.  I  have  most 
dim  apprehensions  of  the  four  great  monarchies;  and  some- 25 
times  the  Assyrian,  sometimes  the  Persian,  floats  as  first  in  my 
fancy.  I  make  the  widest  conjectures  concerning  Egypt,  and 
her  shepherd  kings.  My  friend  J/.,  with  great  painstaking, 
got  me  to  think  I  understood  the  first  proposition  in  Euclid,  but 
gave  me  over  in  despair  at  the  second.  I  am  entirely  unac-  30 
quainted  with  the  modern  languages ;  and,  like  a  better  man'^ 
than  myself,  have  "small  Latin  and  less  Greek."  I  am  a 
stranger  to  the  shapes  and  texture  of  the  commonest  trees, 
herbs,  flowers  —  not  from  the  circumstance  of  my  being  town- 
born —  fori  should  have  brought  the  same  inobservant  spirit  35 
into  the  world  with  me,  had  1  first  seen  it  "  on  Devon's  leafy 
I 


00  THK   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

sliores,"  — .ind  am  no  less  at  a  loss  among  purely  town  objects, 
tools,  engines,  mechanic  processes.  —  Not  that  I  affect  igno- 
rance—  but  my  head  has  not  many  mansions,  nor  spacious; 
ami  I  have  been  obliged  to  fill  it  with  such  cabinet  curiosities 

T)  as  it  can  hold  without  aching.  I  sometimes  wonder  how  I  have 
passed  my  probation  with  so  little  discredit  in  the  world,  as  I 
liave  done,  upon  so  meagre  a  stock.  But  the  fact  is,  a  man  may 
do  very  well  with  a  very  little  knowledge,  and  scarce  be  found 
out,  in  mixed  company ;  everybody  is  so  much  more  ready  to 

10  produce  his  own,  than  to  call  for  a  display  of  your  acquisitions. 
lUit  in  a  tete-a-tete  there  is  no  shuffling.  The  truth  will  out. 
There  is  nothing  which  I  dread  so  much,  as  the  being  left  alone 
for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  with  a  sensible,  well-informed  nian, 
that  does  not  know  me.     I  lately  got  into  a  dilemma  of  this 

15  sort.  — 

In  one  of  my  daily  jaunts  between  Bishopsgate  and  Shackle- 
well,  the  coach  stopped  to  take  up  a  staid-looking  gentleman, 
about  the  wrong  side  of  thirty,  who  was  giving  his  parting 
directions  (while  the  steps  were  adjusting),  in  a  tone  of  mild 

20  authority,  to  a  tall  youth,  who  seemed  to  be  neither  his  clerk, 
his  son,  nor  his  servant,  but  something  partaking  of  all  three. 
The  youth  was  dismissed,  and  we  drove  on.  As  w^e  were  the 
sole  passengers,  he  naturally  enough  addressed  his  conversation 
to  me  ;  and  we  discussed  the  merits  of  the  fare ;  the  civility 

2."  and  punctuality  of  the  driver  ;  the  circumstance  of  an  opposi- 
tion  coach  having  been  lately  set  up,  with  the  probabilities  of 
its  success — to  all  which  I  was  enabled  to  return  pretty  satis- 
factory answers,  having  been  drilled  into  this  kind  of  etiquette 
by  some  years'  daily  practice  of  riding  to  and  fro  in  the  stage 

30  aforesaid  —  when  he  suddenly  alarmed  me  by  a  startling  ques- 
tion, whether  I  had  seen  the  show  of  prize  cattle  that  morning 
in  Smithfield?  Now,  as  I  had  not  seen  it,  and  do  not  greatly 
care  for  such  sort  of  exhibitions,  I  was  obhged  to  return  a  cold 
negative.     He  seemed  a  little  mortified,  as  well  as  astonished, 

35  at  my  declaration,  as  (it  appeared)  he  was  just  come  fresh  from 
the  sight,  and  doubtless  had  hoped  to  compare  notes  on  the 
subject.  However,  he  assm-ed  me  that  I  had  lost  a  fine  treat, 
as  it  far  exceeded  the  show  of  last  year.  We  were  now 
approaching  Norton    Folgate,  when   the  sight  of   some    shop- 


THE    OLD    AND    THE    NEW   SCHOOLMASTER         61 

goods  ticketed  freshened  him  up  into  a  dissertation  upon  the 
cheapness  of  cottons  this  spring.  I  was  now  a  little  in  heartj  as 
the  nature  of  my  morning  avocations  had  brought  me  into  some 
sort  of  familiarity  with  the  raw  material;  and  I  was  surprised 
to  find  how  eloquent  I  was  becoming  on  the  state  of  the  India .' 
market  —  when,  presently,  he  dashed  my  incipient  vanity  to  the 
earth  at  once,  by  inquiring  whether  I  had  ever  made  any  calcu- 
lation as  to  the  value  of  the  rental  of  all  the  retail  shops  in 
London.  Had  lie  asked  of  me  what  song  the  Sirens  sang,  or 
what  name  Achilles  assumed  when  he  hid  himself  among  lu 
women,  I  might,  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  have  liazarded  a 
"  wide  solution."  ^  My  companion  saw  my  embari-assment,  and, 
the  almshouses  beyond  Shoreditch  just  coming  in  view,  with 
great  good  nature  and  dexterity  shifted  his  conversation  to  the 
subject  of  public  charities;  which  led  to  the  comparative  merits  15 
of  provision  for  the  poor  in  past  and  present  times,  with 
observations  on  the  old  monastic  institutions,  and  charitable 
orders ;  —  but,  finding  me  rather  dimly  impressed  with  some 
glimmering  notions  from  old  poetic  associations,  than  strongly 
fortified  with  any  speculations  reducible  to  calculation  on  the  20 
subject,  he  gave  the  matter  up;  and,  the  country  beoinning  to 
open  more  and  more  upon  us,  as  we  approached  the  turnpike 
at  Kingsland  (the  destined  termination  of  his  journey),  he  put 
a  home  thrust  upon  me,  in  the  most  unfortunate  position  he 
could  have  chosen,  by  advancing  some  queries  relative  to  the  25 
North  Pole  Expedition.  While  I  was  muttering  out  something 
about  the  Panorama  of  those  strange  regions  (which  I  had 
actually  seen),  by  way  of  parrj'ing  the  question,  the  coach 
stopping  relieved  me  from  any  further  apprehensions.  My 
companion  getting  out,  left  me  in  the  comfortable  possession  30 
of  my  ignorance ;  and  I  heard  him,  as  he  went  off,  putting 
questions  to  an  outside  passenger,  who  had  alighted  with  him, 
regarding  an  epidemic  disorder  that  had  been  rife  about  Dalston, 
and  which,  my  friend  assured  him,  had  gone  through  five  or 
six  schools  in  that  neighbourhood.  The  truth  now  flashed  upon  35 
me,  that  my  companion  was  a  schoolmaster;  and  that  the 
youth,  whom  he  had  parted  from  at  our  first   acquaintance, 

lUrn  Burial. 


63  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

must  liave  been  one  of  the  bigger  boys,  or  the  usher.  —  He  was 
evidently  a  kind-hearted  man,  who  did  not  seem  so  much 
desirous  of  provoking  discussion  by  the  questions  which  he  put, 
as  of  obtaining  information  at  any  rate.  It  did  not  appear 
T)  that  he  took  any  interest,  either,  in' such  kind  of  inquiries,  for 
their  own  sake;*  but  that  he  was  in  some  way  bound  to  seek  for 
knowletlge.  A  greenish-coloured  coat,  which  he  had  on,  for- 
bade me'to  surmise  that  he  was  a  clergyman.  Tlie  adventure 
gave  birtli  to  some  reflections  on  the  difference  between  persons 

10  of  his  profession  in  past  and  present  times. 

Kest  to  the  souls  of  those  fine  old  Pedagogues;  the  breed, 
long  since  extinct,  of  the  Lilys.°  and  the  Linacres° :  who  be- 
lieving that  all  learning  was  contained  in  the  languages  which 
they  taught,  and  despising  every  other  acquirement  as  superfi- 

15  cial  and  useless,  came  to  tTieir  task  as  to  a  sport !  Passing  from 
infancy  to  age,  they  dreamed  away  all  their  days  as  in  a 
granunar-school.  Revolving  in  a  perpetual  cycle  of  declensions, 
conjugations,  syntaxes,  and  prosodies;  renewing  constantly  the 
occupations  which  had  charmed  their  studious  childhood;  re- 

•ju  hearsing  continually  the  part  of  the  past ;  life  must  have  slipped 
from  them  at  last  like  one  day.  They  were  always  in  their 
first  garden,  reaping  harvests  of  their  golden  time,  among  their 
F/or/- and  their  Sjnci-lef/ia° :  in  Arcadia  still,  but  kings;  the 
ferule  of  their  sway  not  much  harsher,  but  of  like  dignity  with 

2,'>  that  mild  sceptre  attributed  to  king  Basileus"^;  the  Greek  and 
Latin,  their  stately  Pamela®  and  their  Philoclea°;  with  the 
occasional  duncery  of  some  untoward  tyro,'^  serving  for  a  re- 
freshing interlude  of  a  Mopsa,'^  or  a  clown  Damoetas°! 

With  what  a  savour  doth  the  Preface  to  Colet's,°  or  (as  it  is 

■50  sometimes  called)  Paul's  Accidence,  set  forth!  "To  exhort 
every  man  to  the  learning  of  grammar,  that  intendeth  to  attain 
the  understanding  of  the  tongues,  wherein  is  contained  a  great 
treasury  of  wisdom  and  knowledge,  it  would  seem  but  vain  and 
lost  labour;  for  so  much  as  it  is  known,  that  nothing  can  surely 

3."»  be  ended,  whose  beginning  is  either  feeble  or  faulty;  and  no 
building  be  perfect  whereas  the  foundation  and  groundwork  is 
ready  to  fall,  and  unable  to  uphold  the  burden  of  the.  frame." 
How  well  doth  this  stately  preamble  (comparable  to  those  which 
Milton  commendeth  as  "  having  been  the  usage  to  prefix  to  some 


THE    OLD    AND    THE    NEW    SCHOOLMASTER  63 

solemn  law,  then  first  promulgated  by  Solon°  or  Lycurgus°  ") 
correspond  with  and  illustrate  that  pious  zeal  for  conformity, 
expressed  in  a  succeeding  clause,  which  would  fence  about  gram- 
mar-rules with  the  severity  of  faith-articles !  —  "as  for  the  di- 
versity of  grammars,  it  is  well  profitably  taken  away  by  the  5 
king's  majesties  wisdom,  who  foreseeing  the  inconvenience,  and 
favoural^ly  providing  the  remedie,  caused  one  kind  of  granmiar 
by  sundry  learned  men  to  be  diligently  drawn,  and  so  to  be  set 
out,  only  everywhere  to  be  taught  for  the  use  of  learners,  and 
for  the  hurt  in  changing  of  schoolmaisters."  What  a  gusto  in  10 
that  which  follows :  "  wherein  it  is  profitable  that  he  (the 
pupil)  can  orderly  decline  his  noun  and  his  verb."     His  noun  ! 

The  fine  dream  is  fading  away  fast ;  and  the  least  concern  of 
a  teacher  in  the  present  day  is  to  inculcate  grammar-rules. 

The  modern  schoolmaster  is  expected  to  know  a  little  of  every- 15 
thing,  because  his  pupil  is  required  not  to  be  entirely  ignorant 
of  anything.  He  must  be  superficially,  if  I  may  so  say,  omnis- 
cient. He  is  to  know  something  of  pneumatics;  of  chemistry; 
of  whatever  is  curious,  or  proper  to  excite  the  attention  of  the 
youthful  mind ;  an  insight  into  mechanics  is  desirable,  with  a  20 
touch  of  statistics;  the  quality  of  soils,  etc.,  botany,  the  consti- 
tution of  his  country,  cum  multis  alus.°  You  may  get  a  notion 
of  some  part  of  his  expected  duties  by  consulting  the  famous 
Tractate  on  Education^  addressed  to  Mr.  Hartlib. 

All  these  things  —  these,  or  the  desire  of  them  —  he  is  ex- 25 
pected  to  instil,  not  b}^  set  lessons  from  professors,  which  he 
may  charge  in  the  bill,  but  at  school  intervals,  as  he  walks  the 
streets,  or  saunters  through  green  fields  (those  natural  instruc- 
tors), with  his  pupils.     The  least  part  of  what  is  expected  from 
him  is  to  be  done  in  school-hours.     He  must  insinuate  knowledge  30 
at  the  mollia  tempora  fayuli°     He  must  vSeize  every  occasion  — 
the  season  of  the  year  —  the  time  of  the  day  —  a  passing  cloud 
—  a  rainbow  —  a  waggon  of  hay  —  a  regiment  of  soldiers  going 
by  —  to  inculcate  something  useful.     He  can  receive  no  pleasure 
from  a  casual  glimpse  of  Nature,  but  must  catch  at  it  as  an  ob-  35 
ject  of  instruction.     He  must  interpret  beauty  into  the  pictu- 
res(pie.     He  cannot  relish  a  beggar-man,  or  a  gipsy,  for  thinking 
of  t  he  suitable  improvement.    Nothing  comes  to  liim,  not  spoiled 
by  tlie  sophisticating  medium  of  moral  uses.     The  Universe  — 


64  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

that  Great  Book,  as  it  has  been  called  — is  to  him  indeed,  to  all 
intents  and  purposes,  a  book,  out  of  which  he  is  doomed  to  read 
tedious  homilies  to  distasting  schoolboys.  —  Vacations  them- 
selves are  none  to  him,  he  is  only  rather  worse  oif  than  before  ; 
5  for  commonly  he  has  some  intrusive  upper-boy  fastened  upon 
him  at  such  times;  some  cadet  of  a  great  family;  some  neg- 
lected lump  of  nobility,  or  gentry;  that  he  must  drag  after 
him  to  the  play,  to  the  Panorama,  to  Mr.  Bartley's  Orrery,  to 
the  Panopticon^  or  into  the  country,  to  a  friend's  house,  or  his 

10  favourite  watering-place.  AVherever  he  goes,  this  uneasy  shadow 
attends  him.  A  boy  is  at  his  board,  and  in  his  path,  and  in  all 
his  movements.     He  is  boy-rid,  sick  of  perpetual  boy. 

Boys  are  capital  fellows  in  their  own  way,  among  their  mates  ; 
but  they  are  unwholesome  companions  for  grown  people.     The 

15  restraint  is  felt  no  less  on  the  one  side  than  on  the  other.  — 
Even  a  child,  that  "  plaything  for  an  hour,"  tires  always.  The 
noises  of  children,  playing  their  own  fancies  —  as  I  now  hearken 
to  them  by  fits,  sporting  on  the  green  before  my  window,  while 
I  am  engaged  in  these  grave  speculations  at  my  neat  suburban 

20  retreat  at  Shacklewell  —  by  distance  made  more  sweet  —  inex- 
pressibly take  from  the  labour  of  my  task.  It  is  like  writing 
to  music.  They  seem  to  modulate  my  periods.  They  ought  at 
least  to  do  so  —  for  in  the  voice  of  that  tender  age  there  is  a 
kind  of  poetry,  far  unlike  the  harsh  prose-accents  of  man's  con- 

25versation.  —  I  should  but  spoil  their  sport,  and  diminish  my 
own  sympathy  for  them,  by  mingling  in  their  pastime. 

I  would  not  be  domesticated  all  my  days  with  a  person  of 
very  superior  capacity  to  my  own— not,  if  I  know  myself  at 
all,  from  any  considerations  of  jealousy  or  self-comparison,  for 

oOthe  occasional  communion  with  such  minds  has  constituted  the 
fortune  and  felicity  of  my  life  —  but  the  habit  of  too  constant 
intercourse  with  spirits  above  you,  instead  of  raising  you,  keeps 
you  down.     Too  frequent  doses  of  original  thinkingfrom  other 
restrain  what  lesser  portion  of  that  faculty  you  may  possess  o 

35  your  own.  You  get  entangled  in  another  man's  mind,  even  as 
you  lose  yourself  in  another  man's  grounds.  You  are  walking 
with  a  tall  varlet,  whose  strides  out-pace  yours  to  lassitude. 
The  constant  operation  of  such  potent  agency  would  reduce 
me,  I  am  convinced,  to  imbecility.     You  may  derive  thoughts 


THE    OLD    AND     THE    NEW    SCHOOLMASTER  Qd 

from  others;  your  w'ay  of  thinking,  the  mould  in  which  your 
thoughts  are  cast,  must  be  your  own.  Intellect  may  be  im- 
parted, but  not  each  man's  intellectual  frame.  — 

As  little  as  I  should  wish  to  be  always  thus  dragged  upward, 
as  little  (or  rather  still  less)  is  it  desirable  to  be  stunted  down- 5 
wards  by  your  associates.     The  trumpet  does  not  more    stun 
you  by  its  loudness,  thau  a  whisper  teases  you  by  its  provoking 
inaudibility. 

Why  are  we,  never  quite  at  our  ease  in  the  presence  of    a 
schoolmaster?  —  because  we  are  conscious  that  he  is  not  quite  10 
at  his  ease  in  ours.     He  is  awkward,  and  out  of  place  in  the 
.society  of  his  equals.     He  comes  like  Gulliver  from  among  his 
little  people,  and  he  cannot  fit  the  stature  of  his  understanding 
to  yours.     He  cannot  meet  you  on   the  .square.     He  wants  a 
point  given  him,  like  an  indifferent  whist-player.      He  is  so  15 
used  to  teaching,  that  he  wants  to  be  teaching  you.     One  of 
these  professors,  upon  my  complaining  that  these  little  sketches 
of  mine  were  anything  but  methodical,  and  that  I  was  unable 
to  make  them  otherwise,  kindly  offered  to  instruct  me  in  the 
method  by  which  3'Oung  gentlemen  in  his  seminary  were  taught  20 
to  compose  English  themes.     The  jests  of  a  schoolmaster  are 
coarse,  or  thin.     They  do  not  tell  out  of  school.     He  is  under  the 
restraint  of  a  formal  and  didactive  hypocrisy  in  company,  as  a 
clergyman  is  under  a  moral  one.     He  can  no  more  let  his  intel- 
lect loose  in  society  than  the  other  can  his  inclinations.     He  is  25 
forlorn  among  his  coevals;  his  juniors  cannot  be  his  friends. 

''  I  take  blame  to  myself,"  said  a  sensible  man  of  this  profes- 
sion, writing  to  a  friend  respecting  a  youth  who  had  quitted 
his  school  al)ruptly,  "  that  your  nephew  was  not  more  attached 
to  me.  But  persons  in  my  situation  are  more  to  be  pitied  than  30 
can  well  be  imagined.  AVe  are  surrounded  by  young,  and,  con- 
sequently, ardently  affectionate  hearts,  but  ice  can  never  hope 
to  share  an  atom  of  their  affections.  The  relation  of  master 
and  scholar  forbids  this.  How  pleasing  this  must  he  to  you,  how 
I  envy  your  feelings  !  my  friends  will  sometimes  say  to  me,  wlien  35 
they  see  young  men  whom  I  have  educated,  return  after  some 
years  absence  from  school,  their  eyes  shining  with  pleasure, 
while  they  shake  hands  with  their  old  master,  bringing  a  pres- 
ent of  game  to  me,  or  a  toy  to  my  wife,  and  thanking  nie  in 
r 


66  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

tlie  \varmest  terms  for  my  care  of  their  education.  A  holiday 
is  begged  for  the  bo^'s ;  the  house  is  a  scene  of  happiness ;  I, 
only.^aiu  sad  at  heart. — This  fine-spirited  and  warm-hearted 
yoiitli,  who  fancies  he  repays  his  master  with  gratitude  for  the 

5 care  of  his  boyish  years— 'this  young  man  —  in  the  eight  long 
years  I  watched  over  him  with  a  parent's  anxiety,  never  could 
repay  me  with  one  look  of  genuine  feeling.  He  was  proud, 
when  I  praised;  he  was  submissive,  when  I  reproved  him  ;  but 
he  did  never  love  me —  and  what  he  now  mistakes  for  gratitude 

10  and  kindness  for  me,  is  but  the  pleasant  sensation  which  all 
persons  feel  at  revisiting  the  scenes  of  their  boyish  hopes  and 
fears :  and  the  seeing  on  equal  terms  the  man  they  w^ere  accus- 
tomed to  look  up  to  with  reverence.  My  wife  too,"  this  inter- 
esting correspondent  goes  on  to  say,  "  m}*  once  darling  Anna,  is 

15  the  wife  of  a  schoolmaster. —  When  I  married  her  —  knowing 
that  the  wife  of  a  schoolmaster  ought  to  be  a  busy  notable 
creature,  and  fearing  that  my  gentle  Anna  w^ould  ill  supply  the 
loss  of  my  dear  bustling  mother,  just  then  dead,  who  never  sat 
still,  was  in  every  part  of  the  house  in  a  moment,  and  w' horn  I  was 

20  obliged  sometimes  to  ihreaten  to  fasten  down  in  a  chair,  to  save 
her  from  fatiguing  herself  to  deaCli  —  I  expressed  my  fears  that 
I  was  bringing  her  into  a  way  of  life  unsuitable  to  her ;  and 
she,  who  loved  me  tenderly,  promised  for  my  sake  to  exert  her- 
self to  perform  the  duties  of  her  new  situation.     She  promised. 

25  and  she  has  kept  her  word.  What  wonders  w^ill  not  woman's 
love  perform?  —  My  house  is  managed  with  a  propriety  and 
decorum  unknown  in  other  schools ;  my  boys  are  well  fed,  look 
healthy,  and  have  every  proper  accommodation ;  and  all  this 
performed  with  a  carefiil  economy,  that  never  descends  to  mean- 

30  ness.  But  I  have  lost  my  gentle  helpless  Anna  !  When  we  sit 
down  to  enjoy  an  hour  of  repose  after  the  fatigue  of  the  day,  I 
am  compelled  to  listen  to  what  have  been  her  useful  (and  they 
are  really  useful)  employments  through  the  day,  and  what  she 
pn)i)Oses  for  her  to-morrow's  task.     Her  heart  and  her  features 

,M)  are  changed  by  the  duties  of  her  situation.  To  the  boys,  she 
never  appears  other  than  the  master's  wife,  and  she  looks*^  up  to 
me  as  the  boi/s'  master :  to  whom  all  show  of  love  and  affection 
would  be  highly  improper,  and  unbecoming  the  dignity  of  her 
situation  and  mine.     Yet  this  my  gratitude  forbids  me  to  hint 


VALENTINE'S    DAY  67 

to  her.  For  my  sake  she  submitted  to  be  this  altered  creature, 
and  can  I  reproacli  her  for  it  ?  "  —  For  tlie  communication  of 
this  letter  I  am  indebted  to  my  cousin  Bridget. 


VALENTINE'S   DAY 

Hail  to  thy  returning  festival,  old  Bishop  Valentine  \°    Great 
is   thy  name    in  the  rubric,^  thou  venerable  Arch-tiamen°  of  5 
Hymen° !      Immortal  Go-between;    who  and  what  manner  of 
person  art  thou?     Art  thou  but  a  name,  typifying  the  restless 
principle  which  impels  poor  humans  to  seek  perfection  in  union? 
or  wert  thou  indeed  a  mortal  prelate,  with  thy  tippet  and  thy 
rochet,°  thy  apron  on,  and  decent^  lawn  sleeves  ?     Mysterious  10 
personage  !       Like    imto   thee,   assuredly,    there    is    no    other 
mitred°  father  in   the  calendar ;  not  Jerome, °  nor  Ambrose," 
nor  Cyril°;  nor  the  consigner  of  undipt  infants  to  eternal  tor- 
ments, Austin,°  whom  all  mothers  hate;  nor  he  who  hated  all 
mothers,  Origen°;  nor  Bishop  Bull,  nor  Archbishop  Parker,  nor  15 
Whitgift.°     Thou   comest   attended   with  thousands   and   ten 
thousands  of  little  Loves,  and  the  air  is 

Brush'd  with  the  hiss  of  rusthng  wings. ° 

Singing  Cupids   are   thy  choristers  and   thy  precentors  ;    and 
instead    of   the  crosier,°  the  mystical   arrow  is  borne   before  20 
thee. 

In  other  words,  this  is  the  day  on  which  those  charming  little 
missives,  ycleped"  Valentines,  cross  and  intercross  each  other 
at  every  street  and  turning.  The  weary  and  all  forspent°  two- 
penny postman  sinks  beneath  a  load  of  delicate  embarrassments,  25 
not  his  own.  It  is  scarcely  credible  to  what  an  extent  this 
ephemeral  courtship  is  carried  on  in  this  loving  town,  to  the 
great  enrichment  of  porters,  and  detriment  of  knockers  and 
bell-wires.  In  these  little  visual  interpretations,  no  emblem  is 
so  common  as  the,  heart,  —  that  little  three-cornered  exponent  30 
of  all  our  hopes  and  fears,  —  the  bestock  and  bleeding  heart; 
it  is  twisted  and  tortured  into  more  alleoories  and  affectations 


68  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

tluui  an  opera  hat.  What  authority  we  have  in  history  or 
mythology  for  placing  the  headquarters  and  metropolis  of  god 
Cupid  in  this  anatomical  seat  rather  than  in  any  other,  is  not 
very  clear ;  but  we  have  got  it,  and  it  will  serve  as  well  as  any 
5  other.  Else  we  might  easily  imagine,  upon  some  other  system 
which  might  have  prevailed  for  anything  which  our  pathology 
knows  to  the  contrary,  a  lover  addresshig  his  mistress,  in  per- 
fect simplicity  of  feeling,  "Madam,  my  licer  and  fortune  are 
entirely  at   your   disposal ;  "    or   putting   a   delicate   question, 

iO"  Amanda,  have  you  a  midriff  to  bestow?"  But  custom  has 
settled  these  things,  and  awarded  the  seat  of  sentiment  to  the 
aforesaid  triangle,  while  its  less  fortunate  neighbours  wait  at 
animal  and  anatomical  distance. 

Xot  many  sounds  in  life,  and  T  include  all  urban  and  all  rural 

15  sounds,  exceed  in  interest  a  knock  at  the  door.  It  "  gives  a  very 
echo  to  the  throne  where  Hope  is  seated."  But  its  issues  seldom 
answer  to  this  oracle  within.  It  is  so  seldom  that  just  the  per- 
son we  want  to  see  comes.  But  of  all  the  clamorous  visitations 
the  welcoraest  in  expectation  is  the  sound  that  ushers  in,  or 

20  seems  to  usher  in,  a  Valentine.  As  the  raven  himself  was 
hoarse  that  announced  the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan,°  so  the 
knock  of  the  postman  on  this  day  is  light,  airy,  confident,  and 
befitting  one  that  bringeth  good  tidings.  It  is  less  mechanical 
than  on  other  days ;  you  will  say,  "  That  is  not  the  post,  I  am 

25 sure."  Visions  of  Love,  of  Cupids,  of  Hymens!  —  delightful 
eternal  commonplaces,  which,  '-having  been  will  always  be;" 
which  no  school-boy  nor  school-man  can  write  away;  having 
your  irreversible  throne  in  the  fancy  and  affections  — what  are 
your  transports,  when  the  happy  maiden,  opening  with  careful 

30  Hnger,  careful  not  to  break  the  emblematic  seal,  bursts  upon 
the  sight  of  some  well-designed  allegory,  some  type,  some  youth- 
ful fancy,  not  without  verses  — 

Lovers  all, 
A  madrigal,° 

.\-,  or  some  such  device,  not  over-abundant  m  sense  —  young  Love 
disclaims  it,  —  and  not  quite  silly  —  something  between  wind 
and  water,  a  chorus  Avhere  the  sheep  might  almost  join  the 
shepherd,  as  they  did,  or  as  I  apprehend  they  did,  in  Arcadia. 


VALENTiyj<fS    DAY  69 

411  Valentines  are"  not  foolish ;  and  I  shall  not  easily  forget 
thine,  my  kind  friend   (if  I  may  have  leave  to  call   you    so) 

E.  B .     E.  B.  lived  opposite  a  young  maiden  whom  he  had 

often  seen,  unseen,  from  his  parlour  window  in  C e-street. 

She  was  all  joyousness  and  innocence,  and  just  of  an  age  to  5 
enjoy  receiving  a  Valentine,  and  just  of  a  temper  to  bear  the 
disappointment  of  missing  one  with  good  humour.     E.  B.  is  an 
artist  of  no  common  powers;  in  the  fancy  parts  of  designing, 
perhaps  inferior  to  none ;  his  name  is  knoM  n  at  the  bottom  of 
many  a  well-executed  vignette  in  the  way  of  his  profession,  but  10 
no  further ;  for  E.  B.  is  modest,  and  the  world  meets  nobody 
halfway.       E.  B.  meditated  how  he    could   repay  this   young 
maiden  for  many  a  favour  which  she  had  done  him  unknow^i ; 
for  when  a  kindly  face  greets  us,  though  but  passing  by,  and 
never  knows  us  again,  nor  we  it,  we  should  feel  it  as  an  obliga-15 
tion  :  and  E.  B.  did.     This  good  artist  set  himself  at  work  to 
please  the  damsel.     It  was  just  before  Valentine's  day  three 
years  since.     He  wrought,  unseen  and  unsuspected,  a  wondrous 
work.     AVe  need  not  say  it  was  on  the  finest  gilt  paper  with 
borders  —  full,  not  of  common  hearts  and  heartless  allegory,  20 
but  all  the  prettiest  stories  of  love  from  Ovid,°  and  older  poets 
than  Ovid  (for  E.  B.  is  a  scholar).     There  was  Pyramus  and 
Thisbe,°  and  be  sure  Dido°  was  not  forgot,  nor  Hero  and  Lean- 
ier°  and  swans  more  than  sang  in  Cayster,°  with  mottoes  and 
fanciful    devices,    such   as    beseemed,  —  a   ^'ork,    in    short,   of  25 
magic.     Iris  dipt  the  woof.°     This  on  Valentine's  eve  he  com- 
mended to  the  all -swallowing  indiscriminate  orifice  (O  ignoble 
:.rust !)  of  the  common  post ;  but  the  humble  medium  did  its 
iuty,  and  from  his  watchful  stand,  the  next  morning,  he  saw 
;he  cheerf  id  messenger  knock,  and  by-and-by  the  precious  charge  30 
ielivered.     He  saw,  unseen,  the  happy  girl  unfold  the  Valentine, 
iance  about,  clap  her  hands,  as  one  after  one  the  pretty  em- 
3lems  unfolded  themselves.     She  danced  about,  not  wath  light 
ove,  or  foolish  expectations,  for  she  had  no  lover ;  or,  if  she 
lad,  none  she  knew  that  could  have  created  those  bright  images  35 
A^hich  delighted  her.     It  was  more  like  some  fairy  present;  a 
jrodsend,  as  our  familiarly  pious   ancestors  termed   a  benefit 
•eceived  where  the  benefactor  was  unknown.     It  would  do  her 
10  harm.     It  would  do  her  good  for  ever  after.     It  is  good  to 


70  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

love  the  unknown.     I  only  give  this  as  a  specimen  of  E.  B.  and 
his  modest  wav  of  doing  a  concealed  kindness. 

Good  morrow  to  my  Valentine,  sings  poor  Ophelia° ;  and  no 
better  wish,  but  with  better  auspices,  we  wish  to  all  faithful 
5  lovers,  who  are  not  too  wise  to  despise  old  legends,  but  are  con- 
tent to  rank  themselves  humble  diocesans  of  old  Bishop  Valen- 
tine, and  his  true  church. 


IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES 

I  am  of  a  coustitiition  so  general,  that  it  consorts  and  sympathiseth 

with  all  things;  I  have  no  antipathy,  or  rather  idiosyncrasy  in   any- 

10  thing.     Those  national  repugnancies  do  not  touch  me,  nor  do  I  hehold 

witli'  prejudice  the  French^  Italian,   Spaniard,   or  Dutch.  —  Reliyio 

Medici. 

That  the  author  of  the  Religio  Medici  mounted  upon  the  airy 
stilts  of  abstraction,  conversant  about  notional  and  conjectural 

lo  es.sences ;  in  whose  categories  of  Being  the  possible  took  the 
upper  hand  of  the  actual ;  should  have  overlooked  the  imperti- 
nent individualities  of  such  poor  concretions  as  mankind,  is  not 
nuich  t^  be  admired.^  It  is  rather  to  be  wondered  at,  that  in 
the  genus  of  animals  he  should  have  condescended  to  distin- 

•jO  guish  that  species  at  all.  For  myself  —  earth-bound  and  fet- 
tered to  the  scene  of  my  activities,  — 

Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  sky, 

T  confess  that  I  do  feel  the  differences  of  mankind,  national  or 
individual,  to  an  unliealthy  excess.     I  can  look  with  no  indif 

Jo  ferent  eye  upon  things  or  persons.  Whatever  is,  is  to  me  i 
matter  of  taste  or  distaste;  or  when  once  it  becomes  indifferent 
it  begins  to  be  disrelishing.  I  am,  in  plainer  words,  a  bundle 
of  prejudices  — made  up  of  likings  and  dislikings  —  the  veriest 
thrall  to  sympathies,  apathies,  antipathies.     In  a  certain  sense 

TO  I  hoj^e  it  may  be  said  of  me  that  I  am  a  lover  of  my  species.  ] 
can  feel  for  all  indifferently,  but  I  cannot  feel  towards  al 
equally.  The  more  purely-English  word  that  expresses  sym 
pathy,  will  better  explain  my  meaning.     I  can  be  a  friend  to  j 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES  71 

worthy  man,  who  upon  another  account  cannot  be  my  mate  or 
fellow.     I  cannot  like  all  peoj)le  alike. ^ 

I  have  been  trying  all  my  life  to  like  Scotchmen,  and  am 
obliged  to  desist  from  the  experiment  in  despair.  They  can- 
not like  me  —  and  in  truth,  I  never  knew  one  of  that  nation  who  5 
attempted  to  do  it.  There  is  something  more  plain  and  ingen- 
uous in  their  mode  of  proceeding.  We  know  one  another  at 
first  sight.  There  is  an  order  of  imperfect  intellects  (under 
which  mine  must  be  content  to  rank)  which  in  its  constitution 

is  essentially  anti-Caledonian.°  The  owners  of  the  sort  of  10 
faculties  I  allude  to,  have  minds  rather  suggestive  than  com- 
prehensive. They  have  no  pretences  to  much  clearness  or 
precision  in  their  ideas,  or  in  their  manner  of  expressing 
them.  Their  intellectual  wardrobe  (to  confess  fairly)  has  few 
whole  pieces  in  it.  They  are  content  with  fragments  and  scat- 15 
tered  pieces  of  Truth.  She  presents  no  full  front  to  them  —  a 
feature  or  side-face  at  the  most.  Hints  and  glimpses,  germs 
and  crude  essays  at  a  system,  is  the  utmost  they  pretend  to. 

I I  would  be  miderstood  as  confining  myself  to  the  subject  of  imper- 
fect sympathies.  To  nations  or  classes  of  men  there  can  be  no  direct 
antipathy.  There  may  be  individuals  born  and  constellated  so  opposite 
to  another  individual  nature,  that  the  same  sphere  cannot  hold  them. 
I  have  met  with  my  moral  antipodes,  and  can  believe  the  story  of  two 
persons  meeting  (who  never  saw  one  another  before  in  their  lives)  and 
instantly  fighting. 


"We  by  proof  find  there  should  be 


'Twixt  man  and  man  such  an  antipathy, 
That  though  he  can  show  no  just  reasou  why 
For  any  former  wrong  or  injury, 
Can  neither  find  a  blemish  in  his  fame. 
Nor  aught  in  face  or  feature  justly  blame, 
Can  challenge  or  accuse  him  of  no  evil. 
Yet  notwithstanding  hates  him  as  a  devil. 

The  lines  are  from  old  Heywood's°  ''Hierarchie  of  Angels,"  and  he 
svibjoins  a  curious  stoiy  in  confirmation,  of  a  Spaniard  who  attempted 
to  assassinate  a  king  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  and  being  put  to  the  rack 
could  give  no  other  reason  for  the  deed  but  an  inveterate  antipathy 
which  he  had  taken  to  the  first  sight  of  the  king. 


The  cause  which  to  that  act  compell'd  him 

Was,  he  ne'er  loved  him  since  he  first  beheld  him. 


72  THE    ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

They  beat  up  a  little  game  peradventuve  —  and  leave  it  to 
knottier  heads,  more  robust  coustitutious,  to  run  it  down.  The 
lijjht  that  lights  them  is  not  steady  and  polar,  but  mutable  and 
shifting:    waxing,  and   again   waning.     Their  conversation  is 

5  accordingly.  They  will  throw  out  a  random  word  in  or  out  of 
sea.son,  and  l^e  content  to  let  it  pass  for  what  it  ls  worth.  They 
cannot  sj)eak  always  as  if  they  were  upon  their  oath  —  but  must 
be  understood,  speaking  or  writing,  with  some  abatement.  They 
seldom  wait  to  mature  a  proposition,  but  e'en  bring  it  to  mar- 

10  ket  in  the  green  ear.  They  delight  to  impart  their  defective 
discoveries  as  they  arise,  without  waiting  for  their  full  develop- 
ment. They  are  no  system atizers,  and  would  but  err  more  by 
attempting  it.  Their  minds,  as  I  said  before,  are  suggestive 
merely.     The  brain  of  a  true  Caledonian  (if  I  am  not  mistaken) 

ir»  is  constituted  upon  quite  a  different  plan.  His  Minerva  is  born 
in  panoply."  You  are  never  admitted  to  see  his  ideas  in  their 
growth  —  if,  indeed,  they  do  grow,  and  are  not  rather  put  to- 
gether upon  principles  of  clock-work.  You  never  catch  his 
mind  in  an  undress.     He  never  hints  or  suggests  anything,  but 

•JO  unlades  his  stock  of  ideas  in  perfect  order  and  completeness.  He 
brings  his  total  wealth  into  company,  and  gravely  unpacks  it. 
His  riches  are  always  about  him.  He  never  stoops  to  catch  a 
glittering  something  in  your  presence,  to  share  it  with  you,  be- 
fore  he  quite  knows  whether  it  be  true  touch  or  not.     You 

-'.'.  cannot  cry  halves  to  anything  that  he  finds.  He  does  not  find, 
but  l)ring.  You  never  witness  his  first  apprehension  of  a  thing. 
His  understanding  is  always  at  its  meridian — you  never  see 
the  first  dawn,  the  early  streaks.  —  He  has  no  falterings  of 
self-suspicion.      Surmises,  guesses,  misgivings,  half-intuitions, 

/J)  semi-consciousnesses,  partial  illuminations,  dim  instincts,  em- 
bryo conceptions,  have  no  place  in  his  brain  or  vocabulary. 
The  twilight  of  dubiety  never  falls  upon  him.      Is  he  orthodox 

—  he  has  no  doubts.  Is  he  an  infidel  —  he  has  none  either. 
Between  the  affirmative  and  the  negative  there  is  no  border-land 

;;.jwith  him.  You  cannot  hover  with  him  upon  the  confines  of 
truth,  or  wander  in  the  maze  of  a  probable  argument.  He 
always  keeps  the  path.     You  cannot  make  excursions  with  him 

—  for  he  sets  you  right.  His  taste  never  fluctuates.  His  mo- 
rality never  abates.     He  cannot  compromise,  or  understand 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES  73 

middle  actions.  There  can  be  but  a  right  and  a  wrong.  His 
conversation  is  as  a  book.  His  affirmations  have  the  sanctity  of 
an  oath.  You  must  speak  npon  the  square  with  him.  He 
'^tops  a  metaphor  like  a  suspected  person  in  an  enemy's  country. 
"  A  healthy  book  !  "  —  said  one  of  his  countrymen  to  me,  who  5 
had  ventured  to  give  that  aj^pellation  to  John  Buncle,  —  "  Did 
I  catch  rightly  what  you  said?  I  have  heard  of  a  man  in 
health,  and  of  a  healthy  state  of  body,  but  I  do  not  see  how 
that  epithet  can  be  properly  applied  to  a  book."  AboA^e  all, 
you  must  beware  of  indirect  expressions  before  a  Caledonian.  10 
Clap  an  extinguisher  upon  your  irony,  if  you  are  unhappily 
blest  with  a  vein  of  it.  Kemember  you  are  upon  your  oath.  I 
have  a  print  of  a  graceful  female  after  Leonardo  da  Vinci,° 
which  I  was  showing  off  to  Mr.  *  *  *  *.  After  he  had  examined 
it  minutely,  I  ventured  to  ask  him  how  he  liked  my  beauty  15 
(a  foolish  name  it  goes  by  among  my  friends) — when  he  very 
gravely  assured  me,  that  "he  had  considerable  respect  for  my 
character  and  talents"  (so  he  was  pleased  to  say),  "but  had 
not  given  himself  much  thought  about  the  degree  of  my  per- 
sonal pretensions."  The  misconception  staggered  me,  but  did  20 
not  seem  much  to  disconcert  him.  —  Persons  of  this  nation  are 
particularly  fond  of  affirming  a  truth  —  which  nobody  doubts. 
They  do  not  so  properly  affirm,  as  annunciate  it.  They  do 
indeed  appear  to  have  such  a  love  of  truth  (as  if,  like  virtue,  it 
were  valuable  for  itself)  that  all  truth  becomes  equally  valuable,  25 
whether  the  proposition  that  contains  it  be  new  or  old,  dis- 
puted, or  such  as  is  impossible  to  become  a  subject  of  disputation. 
I  was  present  not  long  since  at  a  party  of  North  Britons,  where 
a  son  of  Burns°  was  expected ;  and  happened  to  drop  a  silly 
expression  (in  my  South  British  way),  that  I  wished  it  were  30 
the  father  instead  of  the  son  —  when  four  of  them  started  up 
at  once  to  inform  me,  that  "  that  was  impossible,  because  he 
was  dead."  An  impracticable  wish,  it  seems,  was  more  than  they 
could  conceive.  Swift°  has  hit  off  this  part  of  their  character, 
namely  their  love  of  truth,  in  his  biting  way,  but  with  an  35 
illiberality  that  necessarily  confines  the  passage  to  the  margin.^ 

1  There  are  some  people  who  think  they  sufficiently  acquit  them- 
Uelves,  and  entertain  their  company,  with  relating  facts  of  no  conse- 


74  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

The  tedioiisness  of  these  people  is  certainly  provoking.  I 
wonder  if  they  ever  tire  one  another  !  —  In  my  early  life  1  had 
a  passionatf  fondness  for  the  poetry  of  Burns.  I  have  some- 
times foolishly  hoped  to  ingratiate  myself  with  his  countrymen 
5  l\v  expressing  it.  But  I  have  always  found  that  a  true  Scot 
resents  your  admiration  of  his  compatriot,  even  more  than  he 
would  your  contempt  of  him.  The  latter  he  imputes  to  your 
"imperfect  acquaintance  with  many  of  the  w^ords  which  he 
uses;  "  and  the  same  objection  makes  it  a  presumption  in  you 

lOto  suppose  that  you  can  admire  him.  —  Thomson^  they  seem 
to  have  forgotten.  Smollett"  they  have  neither  forgotten  nor 
forgiven,  for  his  delineation  of  Rory  and  his  companion,  upon 
their  first  introduction  to  our  metropolis.  —  Speak  of  Smollett" 
as  a  great  genius,  and  they  will  retort  upon  you  Hume's"  His- 

15  tory  compared  with  his  Continuation  of  it.  What  if  the  historian 
had  continued  Humphrey  Clinker? 

I  have,  in  the  abstract,  no  disrespect  for  Jews.  They  are  a 
piece  of  stubborn  antiquity,  compared  with  whicli  Stonehenge" 
is  in  its  nonage."     They  date  beyond  the    pyramids.     But   I 

20  should  not  care  to  be  in  habits  of  familiar  intercourse  with 
any  of  that  nation.  I  confess  that  I  have  not  the  nerves  to 
enter  their  synagogues.  Old  prejudices  cling  about  me.  I 
cannot  shake  off  the  story  of  Hugh  of  Lincoln."  Centuries  of 
injury,   contempt,    and   hate,    on   the   one   side,  —  of    cloaked 

25  revenge,  dissimulation,  and  hate,  on  the  other,  between  our 
and  their  fathers,  must  and  ought  to  affect  the  blood  of  the 
children.  I  cannot  believe  it  can  run  clear  and  kindly  yet ;  or 
that  a  few  fine  words,  such  as  candour,  liberality,  the  light  of  a 
nineteenth  century,  can  close  up  the  breaches  of  so  deadly  a 

r>0  disunion.  A  Hebrew  is  nowhere  congenial  to  me.  He  is  least 
distasteful  on  'Change  — for  the  mercantile  spirit  levels  all 
distinctions,  as  all  are  beauties  in  the  dark.     I  boldly  confess 

quence,  not  at  all  out  of  the  road  of  such  common  incidents  as  happen 
every  day  ;  and  this  I  have  observed  more  frequently  among  the  Scots 
than  any  other  nation,  who  are  very  careful  not  to  omit  the  minutes- 
circumstances  of  time  or  place  ;  which  kind  of  discourse,  if  it  were  no" 
a  little  relieved  by  the  uncouth  terms  and  phrases,  as  well  as  accen 
and  gesture,  peculiar  to  that  country,  would  be  hardlv  tolerable. - 
Hints  towards  an  Essay  on  Conversation. 


IMPERFECT    SYMPATHIES  75 

that  I  do  not  relish  the  approximation  of  Jew  and  Christian, 
whicli  has  become  so  fashionable.  The  reciprocal  endearments 
have,  to  me,  something  hypocritical  and  unnatural  in  them.^  I  do 
not  like  to  seethe  Church  and  Synagogue  kissing  and  congeeing  in 
awkward  postures  of  an  affected  civility.  K  they  are  converted,  5 
why  do  they  not  come  over  to  us  altogether?  Why  keep  up  a 
form  of  separation,  when  the  life  of  it  is  fled?  If  they  can  sit 
with  us  at  table,  why  do  they  keck  at  our  cookery  ?  I  do  not 
understand  these  half  conver'tites.  Jews  christianizing  —  Chris- 
tians judaizing —  puzzle  me.  I  like  fish  or  flesh.  A  moderate  10 
Jew  is  a  more  confounding  piece  of  anomaly  than  a  wet 
Quaker.      The  spirit  of  the  synagogue  is  essentially  separative. 

B °  would  have  been  more  in  keeping  if  he  had  abided  by 

the  faith  of  his  forefathers.     There  is  a  fine  scorn  in  his  face, 

which  nature  meant  to  be   of Christians.      The    Hebrew  15 

spirit  is  strong  in  him,  in  spite  of  his  proselytism.  He  cannot 
conquer  the  Shibboleth."  How  it  breaks  out  w^hen  he  sings, 
"  The  Children  of  Israel  passed  through  the  Red  Sea ! "  The 
auditors,  for  the  moment,  are  as  Egyptians  to  him,  and  he  rides 
over   our   necks   in  triumph.      There   is    no   mistaking   him.  20 

B has  a  strong  expression  of  sense  in  his  countenance,  and 

it  is  confirmed  by  his  singing.  The  foundation  of  his  vocal 
excellence  is  sense.  He  sings  with  understanding,  as  Kemble° 
delivered  dialogue.  He  w^ould  sing  the  Commandments,  and 
give  an  appropriate  character  to  each  prohibition.  His  nation,  25 
in  general,  have  not  over-sensible  countenances.  How  should 
they? — but  yoa  seldom  see  a  silly  expression  among  them. — 
Gain,  and  the  pursuit  of  gain,  sharpen  a  man's  visage.  I  never 
heard  of  an  idiot  being  born  among  them.  —  Some  admire  the 
Jewish  female-physiognomy.  I  admire  it  —  but  wilh  trembling.  30 
JaeP  had  those  full  dark  inscrutable  eyes. 

In  the  Negro  countenance  you  will  often  meet  with  strong 
traits  of  benignity.  I  have  felt  yearnings  of  tenderness  tow^ards 
some  of  these  faces  —  or  rather  masks — that  have  looked  out 
kindly  upon  one  in  casual  encounters  in  the  streets  and  high-  35 
ways.  I  love  what  Fuller  beautifully  calls  —  these  "images  of 
God  cut  in  ebony."  But  I  should  not  like  to  associate  with 
them,  to  share  my  meals  and  my  good  nights  with  them  — 
because  they  are  black. 


7(5  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

T  lovo  Quaker  ways,  and  Quaker  worship.  I  venerate  the 
Quaker  principles.  It  does  me  good  for  the  rest  of  the  day 
wheu  I  meet  any  of  their  people  in  my  path.  When  I  am 
rutiled  or  disturbed  by  any  occurrence,  the  sight,  or  quiet  voice 

5  of  a  Quaker,  acts  upon  me  as  a  ventilator,  lightening  the  air, 
and  takiug  off  a  load  from  the  bosom.  But  I  cannot  like  the 
Quakers  (as  I)esdemona°  would  say)  "  to  live  with  them."  I  am 
all  over  sophisticated  —  with  humours,  fancies,  craving  hourly 
sympatliy.      I  must  have  books,  pictures,  theatres,  chit-chat, 

10  sJ^andal,  jokes,  ambiguities,  and  a  thousand  whim-whams,  which 
tiieir  siiripler  taste  can  do  without.  I  should  starve  at  their 
primitive  banquet.  My  appetites  are  too  high  for  the  salads 
which  (according  to  Evelyn^)  Eve  dressed  for  the  angel ;  my 
gusto  too  excited 


15 


To  sit  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse. 


The  indirect  answers  which  Quakers  are  often  found  to  return 
to  a  question  put  to  them  may  be  explained,  I  think,  without 
the  vulgar  assumption,  that  they  are  more  given  to  evasion  and 
equivocating  than  other  people.     They  naturally  look  to  their 

_'o  words  more  carefully,  and  are  more  cautious  of  committing  them- 
selves. They  have  a  peculiar  character  to  keep  up  on  this  head. 
They  stand  iu  a  manner  upon  their  veracity.  A  Quaker  is  by 
law  exempted  from  taking  an  oath.  The  custom  of  resorting 
to  an  oath  iu  extreme  cases,  sanctified  as  it  is  by  all  religious 

•jr.  anti(piity,  is  apt  (it  must  be  confessed)  to  introduce  into  the 
laxer  sort  of  niiuds  the  notion  of  two  kinds  of  truth  —  the  one 
applicable  to  the  solemn  affairs  of  justice,  and  the  other  to  the 
common  proceedings  of  daily  intercourse.  As  truth  bound  upon 
the  conscience  by  an  oath  can  be  but  truth,  so  in  the  common 

.30  affirmations  of  the  shop  and  the  market-place  a  latitude  is  ex- 
pected and  conceded  upon  questions  wanting  this  solemn  cove- 
nant. Something  less  than  truth  satisfies.  It  is  common  to 
hear  a  person  say,  "  You  do  not  expect  me  to  speak  as  if  I  were 
uiK)n  my  oath."     Hence  a  great  deal  of  incorrectness  and  inad- 

35  vert4.'ncv,  short  of  falsehood,  creeps  into  ordinary  conversation; 
and  a  kind  of  secondary  or  laic-truth  is  tolerated,  where  clergv- 
truth  —  oath-truth,  by  the  nature  of  the  circumstances,  is  not 


IMPERFECT    SYMPATHIES  77 

leqiiired.  A  Quaker  knows  none  of  this  distinction.  His  sim- 
ple aflimiation  being  received  upon  the  most  sacred  occasions, 
without  any  further  test,  stamps  a  value  u^Don  the  words  which 
he  is  to  use  upon  the  most  indifferent  topics  of  life.  He  looks 
to  them,  naturally,  with  more  severity.  You  can  have  of  him  5 
no  more  than  his  word.  He  knows,  if  he  is  caught  tripping  in 
a  casual  expression,  he  forfeits,  for  himself  at  least,  his  claim 
to  the  invidious  exemption.  He  knows  that  his  syllables  are 
weighed  —  and  how  far  a  consciousness  of  this  particular  watch- 
fulness, exerted  against  a  person,  has  a  tendency  to  produce  10 
indirect  answers,  and  a  diverting  of  the  question  by  honest 
means,  might  be  illustrated,  and  the  practice  justified,  by  a 
more  sacred  example  than  is  proper  to  be  adduced  upon  this 
occasion.  The  admirable  j^resence  of  mind,  which  is  notori- 
ous in  Quakers  upon  all  contingencies,  might  be  traced  to  this  15 
imposed  self-watchfulness  —  if  it  did  not  .seem  rather  an  hum- 
ble and  secular  scion  of  that  old  stock  of  religious  constancy, 
which  never  bent  or  faltered,  in  the  Primitive  Friends,  or  gave 
way  to  the  winds  of  persecution,  to  the  violence  of  judge  or 
accuser,  under  trials  and  racking  examinations.  "You  will 20 
never  be  the  wiser,  if  I  sit  here  answering  your  questions  till 
miduight,"  said  one  of  those  upright  Justicers  to  Penn,  who 
had  been  putting  law-cases  with  a  ]3uzzling  subtlety.  "  There- 
after as  the  answers  may  be,"  retorted  the  Quaker.  The  as- 
tonishing composure  of  this  people  is  sometimes  ludicrously  25 
displayed  in  lighter  instances.  —  I  was  travelling  in  a  stage- 
coach with  three  male  Quakers,  buttoned  up  in  the  straitest 
nonconformity  of  their  sect.  AYe  stopped  to  bait  at  Andover, 
where  a  meal,  partly  tea  apparatus,  partly  supper,  was  set  be- 
fore us.  My  friends  confined  themselves  to  the  tea-table.  I  30 
in  my  w^ay  took  supper.  AYhen  the  landlady  brought  in  the 
bill,  the  eldest  of  my  companions  discovered  that  she  had 
charged  for  both  meals.  This  was  resisted.  Mine  hostess  was 
very  clamorous  and  positive.  Some  mild  arguments  were  used 
on  the  part  of  the  Quakers,  for  which  the  heated  mind  of  the  35 
good  lady  seemed  by  no  means  a  fit  recipient.  The  guard  came 
in  with  his  usual  peremptory  notice.  The  Quakers  pulled  out 
their  money  and  formally  tendered  it  —  so  much  for  tea  —  I, 
in  humble  imitation,  tendering  mine  —  for  the  suj^per  which 


78  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

I  had  taken.  She  would  not  relax  in  her  demand.  So  they 
all  tliree  quietly  put  up  their  silver,  as  did  myself,  and  marched 
out  of  the  room,  the  eldest  and  gravest  going  first,  with  myself 
closing  up  the  rear,  who  thought  I  could  not  do  better  than 
:>  follow  the  example  of  such  grave  and  warrantable  personages. 
We  got  in.  The  steps  went  up.  The  coach  drove  off.  The 
murmurs  of  mine  hostess,  not  very  indistinctly  or  ambiguously 
pronounced,  became  after  a  time  inaudible  —  and  now  my  con- 
science, which  the  whimsical  scene  had  for  a  while  suspended, 

H)  beginning  to  give  some  twitches,  I  waited,  in  the  hope  that 
some  justification  would  be  offered  by  these  serious  persons  for 
the  seeming  injustice  of  their  conduct.  To  my  great  surprise 
not  a  syllable  was  dropped  on  the  subject.  They  sat  as  mute 
as  at  a  meeting.     At  length  the  eldest  of  them  broke  silence, 

15  by  inquiring  of  his  next  neighbour,  "  Hast  thee  heard  how 
indigos  go  at  the  India  House?"  and  the  question  operated 
a^s  a  soporific  on  my  moral  feeling  as  far  as  Exeter. 


WITCHES,   AND   OTHER  NIGHT-FEARS 

We  are  too  hasty  when  we  set  down  our  ancestors  in  the 
gross  for  fools,  for  the  monstrous  inconsistencies  (as  they  seem 

20  to  us)  involved  in  their  creed  of  witchcraft.  In  the  relations 
of  this  visible  world  we  find  them  to  have  been  as  rational,  and 
shrewd  to  detect  an  historic  anomaly,  as  ourselves.  But  when 
once  the  invisible  world  was  supposed  to  be  opened,  and  the 
lawless  agency  of  bad  spirits  assumed,  what  measures  of  prob- 

25  ability,  of  decency,  of  fitness,  or  proportion  —  of  that  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  likely  from  the  palpable  absurd  — could  thev 
have  to  guide  them  in  the  rejection  or  admission  of  any  par- 
ticular testimony?  — That  maidens  pined  away,  wasting  in- 
wardly as  their  waxen  images  consumed  before  a  fire  —  that 

:30  corn  was  lodged,°  and  cattle  lamed  —  that  whirlwinds  uptore  in 
diabolic  revelry  the  oaks  of  the  forest  — or  that  spits  and 
kettles  only  danced  a  fearful-innocent  vagary  about  some 
rustic's  kitchen  when  no  wind  was  stirring  —  were  all  equally 


WITCHES,    AND    OTHER    NIGHT-FEARS  79 

probable  where  no  law  of  agency  was  understood.  That  the 
prince  of  the  powers  of  darkness,  passing  by  the  flow^er  and  pomp 
of  the  earth,  should  lay  preposterous  siege  to  the  weak  fantasy  of 
indigent  eld°  —  has  neither  likelihood  nor  unlikelihood  a  priori  to 
us,  who  have  no  measure  to  guess  at  his  policy,  or  standard  to  esti-  5 
mate  what  rate  those  anile  souls  may  fetch  in  the  devil's  market. 
IsTor,  when  the  wicked  are  expressly  symbolised  by  a  goat,  was 
it  to  be  wondered  at  so  much,  that  lie  should  come  sometimes 
in  that  body,  and  assert^  his  metaphor.  —  That  the  intercourse 
was  opened  at  all  between  both  worlds  was  perhaps  the  mis- 10 
take  —  but  that  once  assumed,  I  see  no  reason  for  disbelieving 
one  attested  story  of  this  nature  more  than  another  on  the  score 
of  absurdity.  There  is  no  law  to  judge  of  the  lawdess,  or  canon 
by  which  a  dream  may  be  criticised. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  I  could  not  have  existed  in  15 
the  days  of  received  witchcraft;  that  I  could  not  have  slept  in  a 
village  where  one  of  those  reputed  hags  dwelt.     Our  ancestors 
were  bolder  or  more  obtuse.     Amidst  the  universal  belief  that 
these  wretches  were  in  league  with  the  author  of  all  evil,  hold- 
ing hell  tributary  to  their  muttering,  no  simple  justice  of  the  peace  20 
seems  to  have  scrupled  issuing,  or  silly  headborough  serving,  a 
warrant   upon    them  —  as    if   they  should  subpoena  Satan!  — 
Prospero°  in  his  boat,  with  his   books  and  wand   about  him, 
suffers  himself  to  be  conveyed  away  at  the  mercy  of  his  enemies 
to  an  unknown  island.     He  might  have  raised  a  storm  or  two,  w^e  25 
think,  on  the  passage.     His  acquiescence  is  in  exact  analogy  to 
the  non-resistance  of  witches  to  the  constituted  powers.  ■ — What 
stops  the  Fiend  in  Spenser°  from  tearing  Gu5^on°  to  pieces  — 
or  who  had  made  it  a  condition  of  his  prey  that  Guyon  must 
take  assay°  of  the  glorious  bait — we  have  no  guess.     We  do  30 
not  know  the  laws  of  that  countr3\ 

From  my  childhood  I  was  extremely  inquisitive  about  witches 
and  wdtch-stories.  My  maid,  and  more  legendary  aunt,  supplied 
me  with  good  store.  But  I  shall  mention  the  accident  which 
directed  my  curiosity  originally  into  this  channel.  In  my  35 
father's  book-closet  the  Histor}^  of  the  Bible,  by  Stackhouse, 
occupied  a  distinguished  station.  The  pictures  with  v\-hich  it 
abounds  —  one  of  the  ark,  in  particular,  and  another  of  Solo- 
mon's temple,   delineated  with    all   the  fidelity  of  ocular  ad- 


80  THE   ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

measurement,  as  if  the  artist  had  been  upon  the  spot  —  attraj^ted 
my  ohildisli  attention.     There  was  a  picture,  too,  of  the  Witch 
raisiiii--  up  Samuel,  which  I  wish  that  I  had  never  seen.    We  shall 
rome  to  that  hereafter.     Stackhouse  is  in  two  huge  tomes ;  and 
o  there  was  a  pleasure  in  removing  folios  of  that  magnitude, 
wliich,  with  infinite  straining,  was  as  much  as  I  could  manage, 
from  tiie  situation  which  they  occupied  upon  an  upper  shelf. 
I  have  not  met  with  the  work  from  that  time  to  this,  but  I 
remember  that  it  consisted  of  Old  Testament  stories,  orderly 
10  set  down,  with  the  objection  appended  to  each  story,  and  the 
solution  of  the  objection  regularly  tacked  to  that.     The  objection 
was  a  summary  of  whatever  difficulties  had  been  opposed  to 
the  credibility  of  the  history,  by  the  shrewdness  of  ancient  or 
modern   infidelity,  drawn   up  with    an  almost  complimentary 
15  excess  of  candour.     The  solution  was  brief,  modest,  and  satis- 
factory.    The  bane  and  antidote  were  both  before  you.      To 
doubts  so  put,  and  so  quaslied,  there  seemed  to  be  an  end  for 
ever.     The  dragon  lay  dead,  for  the  foot  of  the  veriest  babe  to 
trample  on.     But  —  like  as   was   rather   feared   than    realized 
20  from  that  slain  monster°  in  Spenser  —  from  the  womb  of  those 
crushed  errors   young   dragonets  would  creep,  exceeding  the 
prowess  of  so  tender  a  Saint  George^  as  myself  to  vanquish. 
The  habit  of  expecting  objections  to  every  passage,  set  me  upon 
starting  more  objections,  for  the  glory  of  finding  a  solution  of 
25  my   own   for   them.      I   became    staggered    and   perplexed,   a 
sceptic   in  long-coats.      The  pretty  Bible  stories  which  I  had 
read,  or  heard  read  in  church,  lost  their  purity  and  sincerity  of 
impression,  and  were  turned  into  so  many  historic  or  chrono- 
logic  theses   to   be  defended  against  whatever  impugners.     i 
oOwas  not  to  disbelieve  them,  but  —  the  next  thing  to  that — T 
was  to  be  quite  sure  that  some  one  or  other  would  or  had 
disbelieved  them.     Next  to  making  a  child  an  infidel,  is  the 
letting  him  know  that  there  are  infidels  at  all.     Credulity  is 
tiie  man's  weakness,  but  the  child's  strength.      O,  how   ugly 
35  sound   scriptural   doubts   from   the    mouth   of   a   babe  and  a 
suckling !  —  I  should  have  lost  myself  in  these  mazes,  and  have 
pined  away,  I  think,  with  such  unfit  sustenance  as  these  husks 
afforded,  but  for  a  fortunate  piece  of  ill-fortune  which  about 
this  time  befell  nie.     Turning  over  the  picture  of  the  ark  witli 


WirCHES,    AND    OTHER    XIGHT-FEARS  81 

too  much  haste,  I  unhappily  made  a  breach  in  its  ingenious 
fabric  —  driving  my  inconsiderate  fingers  right  through  the 
two  larger  quadrupeds  —  the  elephant  and  the  camel  —  that 
stare  (as  well  they  might)  out  of  the  two  last  windows  next 
the  steerage  in  that  unique  piece  of  naval  architecture.  Stack- 5 
house  w^as  henceforth  locked  up,  and  became  an  interdicted 
treasure.  With  the  book,  the  objections  and  solutions  gradually 
cleared  out  of  my  head,  and  have  seldom  returned  since  in  any 
force  to  trouble  me.  —  But  there  was  one  impression  which  I 
had  imbibed  from  Stackhouse,  w^iich  no  lock  or  bar  could  shut  10 
out,  and  which  w^as  destined  to  try  my  childish  nerves  rather 
more  seriously.  —  That  detestable  picture  ! 

I  was  dreadfully  alive  to  nervous  terrors.  The  night-time 
solitude,  and  the  dark,  were  my  hell.  The  sufferings  I  endured 
in  this  nature  would  justify  the  expression.  I  never  laid  my  15 
head  on  my  pillowy  I  suppose,  from  the  fourth  to  the  seventh  or 
eighth  year  of  my  life  —  so  far  as  memory  serves  in  things  so  long 
ago  —  without  an  assurance,  which  realized  its  own  prophecy, 
of  seeing  some  frightful  spectre.  Be  old  Stackhouse  then 
acquitted  in  part,  if  I  say,  that  to  this  picture  of  the  Witcli  20 
raising  up  Samuel  —  (O  that  old  man  covered  with  a  mantle  !) 
—  I  owe  —  not  my  midnight  terrors,  the  hell  of  my  infancy  — 
but  the  shape  and  manner  of  their  visitation.  It  w^as  he  who 
dressed  up  for  me  a  hag  that  nightly  sate  upon  my  pillow  —  a 
sure  bedfellow,  W' hen  my  aunt  or  my  maid  was  far  from  me.  All  25 
day  long,  w^hile  the  book  w^as  permitted  me,  I  dreamed  waking- 
over  his  delineation,  and  at  night  (if  I  may  use  so  bold  an 
expression)  awoke  into  sleep,  and  found  the  vision  true.  I 
durst  not,  even  in  the  day-light,  once  enter  the  chamber  where 
I  slept,  without  my  face  turned  to  the  window,  aversely  from  30 
the  bed  w^here  my  witch-ridden  pillow  was. —  Parents  do  not 
know  what  they  do  when  they  leave  tender  babes  alone  to  go  to 
sleep  in  the  dark.  The  feeling  about  for  a  friendly  arm  —  the 
hoping  for  a  familiar  voice  —  when  they  wake  screaming  —  and 
find  none  to  soothe  them  —  what  a  terrible  shaking  it  is  to  their  3a 
poor  nerves !  The  keeping  them  up  till  midnight,  through 
candlelight  and  the  unwholesome  hours,  as  they  are  called,  — 
would,  I  am  satisfied,  in  a  medical  point  of  view,  prove  the 
better  caution.  —  That  detestable  picture,  as  I  have  said,  gave 

G 


82  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

the  fashion  to  my  dreams  —  if  dreams  they  ^ve^e  —for  the  scene 
of  them  was  invariably  the  room  in  which  I  lay.  Had  I  never 
met  with  the  picture,  the  fears  would  have  come  self-pictured 
in  some  sliape  or  other  — 

6  Headless  bear,  black  man,  or  ape  — 

but,  as  it  was,  my  imaginations  took  that  form.  —  It  is  not 
book,  or  picture,  or  the  stories  of  foolish  servants,  which  create 
tliese  terrors  in  children.  They  can  at  most  but  give  them  a 
direction.     Dear  little  T.  H.,°  who  of   all  children  has  been 

10  brought  up  with  the  most  scrupulous  exclusion  of  every  taint 
of  superstition  —  who  was  never  allowed  to  hear  of  goblin  or  ajv 
parition,  or  scarcely  to  be  told  of  bad  men,  or  to  read  or  hear  of 
any  distressing  story  —  finds  all  this  world  of  fear,  from  which 
he  has  been  so  rigidly  excluded  ah  extra,  in  his  own  ''thick- 

15  coming  fancies ; "  and  from  his  little  midnight  pillow,  this 
nurse-child  of  optimism  will  start  at  shapes,  unborrowed  of 
tradition,  in  sweats  to  which  the  reveries  of  the  cell-damned 
murderer  are  tranquillity. 

Gorgons,°    and    Hydras,°   and    Chimaeras°  —  dii'e    stories   of 

20  Celjeno°  and  the  Harpies°  —  may  reproduce  themselves  in  the 
brain  of  superstition  —  but  they  were  there  before.  They  are 
transcripts,  types  —  the  archetypes^  are  in  us,  and  eternal. 
How  else  shoidd  the  recital  of  that,  which  we  know  in  a  wak- 
ing sense  to  be  false,  come  to  affect  us  at  all  ?  —  or 

25  Names,  whose  sense  we  see  not, 

Fray  us  with  things  that  be  not  ? 

Is  it  that  we  naturally  conceive  terror  from  such  objects,  con- 
sidered in  their  capacit}'  of  being  able  to  inflict  upon  us  bodilv 
injury  — O,  least  of  all!  These  terrors  are  of  older  staudini. 
30  They  date  beyond  body  — or,  without  the  bodv,  thev  woutd 
have  been  the  same.  All  the  cruel,  tormenting,'defined  devils 
in  Dante  —  tearing,  mangling,  choking,  stifling,  scorching  de- 
mons—are  they  one  half  so  fearful  to  the  spirit  of  a  man,  as 
the  simple  idea  of  a  spirit  unembodied  following  him » 

35  Like  one  that  on  a  lonesome  road 

Doth  walk  in  fear  and  dread, 


WITCHES,    AND    OTHER    NIGHT-FEARS  83 

And  having  once  turn'd  round,  walks  on 
And  turns  no  more  his  head  ; 
Because  he  knows  a  frightful  fiend 
Doth  close  behind  him  tread. i 

That  the  kind  of  fear  here  treated  of  is  purely  spiritual  —  5 
that  it  is  strong  in  proportion  as  it  is  objectless  upon  earth 
—  that  it  predominates  in  the  period  of  sinless  infancy  —  are 
difficulties,  the  solution  of  which  might  afford  some  probable 
insight  into  our  ante-mundane  condition,  and  a  peep  at  least 
into  tlie  shadowland  of  pre-existence.  10 

My  night  fancies  have  long  ceased  to  be  afflictive.  I  confess 
an  occasional  nightmare ;  but  I  do  not,  as  in  early  youth,  keep 
a  stud  of  them.  Fiendish  faces,  with  the  extinguished  taper, 
wdll  come  and  look  at  me ;  but  1  know  them  for  mockeries, 
even  w^hile  I  cannot  elude  their  presence,  and  I  fight  and  grapple  15 
with  them.  For  the  credit  of  my  imagination,  I  am  almost 
ashamed  to  say  how  tame  and  prosaic  my  dreams  are  grown. 
They  are  never  romantic,  seldom  even  rural.  They  are  of 
architecture  and  of  buildings  —  cities  abroad,  which  I  have  never 
seen,  and  hardly  have  hoped  to  see.  I  have  traversed,  for  the  20 
seeming  length  of  a  natural  day,  Rome,  Amsterdam,  Paris,  Lis- 
bon —  their  churches,  palaces,  squares,  market-places,  shops,  sub- 
urbs, ruins,  with  an  inexpressible  sense  of  delight  —  a  map-like 
distinctness  of  trace,  and  a  daylight  vividness  of  vision,  that  was 
all  but  being  awake. — I  have  formerly  travelled  among  the  25 
AVestmoreland  fells  —  my  highest  Alps,  —  but  they  are  objects 
too  mighty  for  the  grasp  of  my  dreaming  recognition ;  and  I 
have  again  and  again  awoke  with  ineffectual  struggles  of  the 
inner  eye,  to  make  out  a  shape  in  any  way  whatever,  of  Hel- 
vellyn.  Methought  I  was  in  that  country,  but  the  mountains  30 
were  gone.  The  poverty  of  my  dreams  mortifies  me.  There 
is  Coleridge,  at  his  will  can  conjure  up  icy  domes,  and  pleasure- 
houses  for  Kubla  Khan,  and  Abyssinian  maids,  and  songs  of 
Abara,  and  caverns. 

Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  runs,  35 

to  solace  his  night  solitudes  —  when  I  cannot  muster  a  fiddle. 
Barry  Cornwall  has   his  tritons   and   his  nereids°  gambolling 

1  Mr.  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner. 


84  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

before  him  in  nocturnal  visions,  and  proclaiming  sons  born  to 
Xei)tune —  when  my  stretch  of  imaginative  activity  can  hardly, 
in  the  night  season,  raise  up  the  ghost  of  a  fishwife.  To  set  my 
!aihu-es  in  somewhat  a  mortifying  light  —  it  was  after  readi::ig 
■  the  noble  Dream  of  this  poet^  that  my  fancy  ran  strong  upon 
these  marine  spectra;  and  the  poor  plastic  power,  snch  as  it 
is,  within  me  set  to  work  to  humour  my  folly  in  a  sort  of 
dream  that  very  night.  Methonght  I  was  upon  the  ocean 
liillows  at  some\sea "nuptials,  riding  and  mounted  high,  with 

10  tlie  customary  train  sounding  their  conchs  before  me  (I  m^^self, 
you  may  be  sure,  the  leading  god),  and  jollily  we  went  career- 
ing over  the  main,  till  just  where  Ino  Leucothea°  should  have 
greeted  me  (I  think  it  was  Ino)  with  a  white°  embrace,  the 
billows  gradually  subsiding,  fell  from  a  sea  roughness  to  a  sea 

lo  calm,  and  thence  to  a  river  motion,  and  that  river  (as  happens 
in  the  familiarization  of  dreams)  was  no  other  than  the  gentle 
Thames,  which  landed  me  in  the  vrafture  of  a  placid  wave  or 
two,  alone,  safe  and  inglorious,  somewhere  at  the  foot  of  Lam- 
beth palace. 

20  The  degree  of  the  soul's  creativeness  in  sleep  might  furnish 
no  whimsical  criterion  of  the  quantum  of  poetical  faculty  resi- 
dent in  the  same  soul  waking.  An  old  gentleman,  a  friend  of 
mine,  and  a  humorist,  used  to  carry  this  notion  so  far,  that 
when  he  saw^  any  stripling  of   his  acquaintance  ambitious  of 

25  becoming  a  poet,  his  first  question  would  be,  —  "Young  man, 
what  sort  of  dreams  have  you?"  I  have  so  much  faith  in  my 
old  friend's  theory,  that  when  I  feel  that  idle  vein  returning 
upon  me,  I  presently  subside  into  my  proper  element  of  prose, 
remembering  those  eluding  nereids,  and  that  inauspicious  in- 

30  land  landinrj. 


MY   RELATIONS 

I  AM  arrived  at  that  point  of  life,  at  which  a  man  may  ac- 
coimt  it  a  blessing,  as  it  is  a  singularity,  if  he  have  either  of 
his  parents  surviving.     I  have  not  that  felicity  — and  some- 
times think  feelingly  of   a  passage   in   "Browne's  Christian 
.■Vi  Morals,"   -1 ■•-     ^        '•  .,    .  , 


MY  RELATIONS  85 

seventy  years  in  the  world.  "In  such  a  compass  of  time,"  he 
says,  "  a  man  may  have  a  close  apprehension  what  it  is  to  be  for- 
gotten, when  he  hath  lived  to  find  none  who  could  remember 
his  father,  or  scarcely  the  friends  of  his  youth,  and  may  sen- 
sibly see  with  what  a  face  in  no  long  time  Oblivion  will  look  5 
upon  himself." 

I  had  an  aunt,  a  dear  and  good  one.  She  was  one  whom  single 
blessedness  had  soured  to  the  world.  She  often  used  to  say, 
that  I  was  the  only  thing  in  it  w^hich  she  loved  ;  and,  when  she 
thought  I  was  quitting  it,  she  grieved  over  me  with  mother's  10 
tears.  A  partiality  quite  so  exclusive  my  reason  cannot  alto- 
gether approve.  She  was  from  morning  till  night  poring  over 
good  books,  and  devotional  exercises.  Her  favourite  volumes 
were,  "  Thomas  a  Kempis,"  °  in  Stanhope's  translation  ;  and  a 
Roman  Catholic  Prayer  Book,  with  the  matins  and  complines  15 
regularly  set  down,  —  terms  which  I  was  at  that  time  too  young 
to  understand.  She  persisted  in  reading  them,  although  admon- 
ished daily  concerning  their  Papistical  tendency;  and  went  to 
church  every  Sabbath,  as  a  good  Protestant  should  do.  These 
were  the  only  books  she  studied ;  though,  I  think  at  one  period  20 
of  her  life,  she  told  me,  she  had  read  \ni\\  great  satisfaction  the 
Adventures  of  an  Unfortunate  Young  Nobleman.  Finding  the 
door  of  the  chapel  in  Essex -street  open  one  day  —  it  was  in 
the  infancy  of  that  heresy  —  she  went  in,  liked  the  sermon,  and 
the  manner  of  worship,  and  frequented  it  at  intervals  for  some  25 
time  after.  She  came  not  for  doctrinal  points,  and  never  missed 
them.  With  some  little  asperities  in  her  constitution,  whi3h  I 
have  above  hinted  at,  she  was  a  steadfast,  friendly  being,  and 
a  fine  old  Christian.  She  was  a  woman  of  strong  sense,  and 
a  shrew^d  mind  —  extraordinary  at  a  repartee;  one  of  the  few 30 
occasions  of  her  breaking  silence  —  else  she  did  not  much  value 
wit.  The  only  secular  employment  I  remember  to  have  seen 
her  engaged  in,  was  the  splitting  of  French  beans,  and  dropping 
them  into  a  China  basin  of  fair  water.  The  odour  of  those 
tender  vegetables  to  this  day  comes  back  upon  my  sense,  redo- 35 
lent  of  soothing  recollections.  Certainly  it  is  the  most  delicate 
of  culinary  operations. 

Male  aunts,  as  somebody  calls  them,  T  had  none  —  to  remem- 
ber-    Bv  the  uncle's  side  I  mav  be  said  to  have  been  born  an 


8G  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

orplmn.  Brothor,  or  sister.  T  never  had  any  —  to  know  them. 
A  sist»'r,  I  think,  tliat  shoukl  have  been  Elizabeth,  died  in  botli 
our  infancies.  What  a  comfort,  or  what  a  care,  may  I  not  have 
misled  in  her!  —  But  I  have  cousins,  sprinkled  about  in  Hert- 
5  fordshire  —  besides  two,  with  whom  I  have  been  all  my  life  in 
habits  of  tlie  closest  intimacy,  and  whom  I  may  term  cousins 
par  excellence.  These  are  James  and  Bridget  Elia.°  They  are 
older  tlian  myself  by  twelve,  and  ten,  years :  and  neither  of  them 
seems  disposed,  in  matters  of  advice  and  guidance,  to  waive  any 

10  of  the  prerogatives  which  ptrimogeniture  confers.  May  they 
continue  still  in  the  same  mind;  and  when  they  shall  be 
seventy  five,  and  seventy  three,  years  old  (I  cannot  spare  them 
sooner),  persist  in  treating  me  in  my  grand  climacteric  precisely 
as  a  stripling,  or  younger  brother! 

15  James  is  an  inexplicable  cousin.  Nature  hath  her  unities, 
which  not  every  ci'itic  can  penetrate;  or,  if  we  feel,  we  cannot 
explain  them.  The  pen  of  Yorick,°  and  of  none  since  his,  could 
have  drawn  J.  E.  entire  —  those  fine  Shandean°  lights  and 
shades,  which  make  up  his  story.     I  must  limp  after  in  my  poor 

20  antithetical  manner,  as  the  fates  have  given  me  grace  and 
talent.  J.  E.  then  — to  the  eye  of  a  common  observer  at  least 
—  seemeth  made  up  of  contradictory  principles.  The  genuine 
ciiild  of  impulse,  the  frigid  philosopher  of  prudence  —  the 
phlegm  of  my  cousin's  doctrine,  is  invariably  at  war  with  his 

25  temperament,  which  is  high  sanguine.  With  always  some  fire- 
new  project  in  his  brain,  J.  E.  is  the  systematic  opponent  of  in- 
novation, and  crier  down  of  everything  that  has  not  stood  the 
test  of  age  and  experiment.  With  a  hundred  fine  notions  chas- 
ing one  another  hourly  in  his  fancy,  he  is  startled  at  the  least 

;w  approach  to  the  romantic  in  others  ;  'and,  determined  by  his  own 
sense  in  everything,  commends  nou  to  the  guidance  of  common 
sense  on  all  occasions.  —  With' a  touch  of  the  eccentric  in  all 
which^  he  does,  or  says,  he  is  only  anxious  that  you  should  not 
commit  yourself  by  doing  anything  absurd  or  singular..    On  my 

3.".  once  letting  slip  at  tabled  that  I  was  not  fond  of  a  certain  popu- 
lar dish,  he  begged  me  at  any  rate  not  to  say  so  —  for  the  world 
wonld  think  me  mad.  He  disguises  a  passionate  fondness  for 
works  of  high  art  (whereof  he  hath  amassed  a  choice  collec- 
tion;, under  the  pretext  of  buying  only  to  sell  again  —  that  his 


MY  RELATIONS  87 

enthusiasm  may  give  no  encouragement  to  yours.  Yet,  if  it 
were  so,  why  does  that  piece  of  tender,  pastoral  i)omenichino° 
hang  still  by  his  wall  ?  —  is  the  ball  of  his  sight  much  more 
dear  to  him? —  or  what  picture-dealer  can  talk  like  him? 

Whereas  mankind  in  general  are  observed  to  warp  their  spec-  5 
ulative  conclusions  to  the  bent  of    their  individual  humours, 
hia  theories  are  sure  to  be  in  diametrical  opposition  to  his  con- 
stitution.    He  is  courageous  as  Charles  of  Sweden,°  upon  in- 
stinct°;    chary  of    his   person   upon   principle,  as  a  travelling 
Quaker.     He  has  been  preaching  up  to  me,  all  my  life,  the  doc-  IG 
trine  of  bowing  to  the  great  —  the  necessity  of  forms,  and  man- 
ner, to  a  man's  getting  on  in  the  world.    He  himself  never  aims 
at  either,  that  I  can   discover,  —  and  has  a  spirit  that  would 
stand  upright  in  the  presence  of  the  Cham  of  Tartary.°     It  is 
pleasant  to  hear  him  discourse  of  patience  —  extolling  it  as  the  15 
truest  wisdom  —  and  to  see  him  during  the  last  seven  minutes 
that  his  dinner  is  getting  ready.     Nature  never  ran  up  in  her 
haste  a  more   restless  piece  of   workmanship   than  when  she 
moulded  this  impetuous  cousin  —  and  Art  never  turned  out  a 
more  elaborate  orator  than  he  can  display  himself  to  be,  iipon  20 
his  favourite  topic  of  the  advantages  of  quiet  and  contentedness 
in  the  state,  whatever  it  be,  that  we  are  placed  in.     He  is  tri- 
umphant on  this  theme,  when  he  has  you  safe  in  one  of  those 
short  stages  thai;  ply  for  the  western  road,  in  a  very  obstructing 
manner,  at  the  foot  of  John  Murray's  street  —  where  you  get  in  25 
when  it  is  empty,  and  are  expected  to  wait  till  the  vehicle  hath 
completed  her  just  freight  —  a  trying  three  quarters  of  an  hour 
to    some  people.     He  wonders  at   your   fidgetiness,  — "  where 
could  we  be  better  than  we  are,  thus  sitting,  thus  consulting?" 
—  "  prefers,  for  his  part,  a  state  of  rest  to  locomotion,"  —  with  30 
an  eye  all  the  while  upon  the  coachman,  —  till  at  length,  wax- 
ing out  of  all  patience,  at  your  icant  of  it,  he  breaks  out  into  a 
pathetic  remonstrance  at  the  fellow  for  detaining  us  so  long  over 
the  time  which  he  had  professed,  and  declares  peremptorily,  that 
"  the  gentleman  in  the  coach  is  determined  to  get  out,  if  he  does  35 
not  drive  on  that  instant." 

Very  quick  at  inventing  an  argument,  or  detecting  a 
sophistry,  lie  is  incai)able  of  attending  gou  in  any  chain  of 
arguing.     Indeed  he  makes  wild  work  with  logic  ;  and  seems 


88  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

to  jump  at  most  admirable  conclusions  by  some  process  not  at 
all  akin  to  it.  Consonantly  enough  to  this,  he  hath  been 
lu'anl  to  deny,  upon  certain  occasions,  that  there  exists  such  a 
facultv  at  all  in  man  as  reason;  and  ^vonde^eth  iiow  man  came 
Stirst  to  have  a  conceit  of  it — enforcing  his  negation  with  all 
the  might  of  rensoninrj  he  is  master  of.  He  has  some  specula- 
tive notions  against  laughter,  and  will  maintain  that  laughing 
is  not  natural  to  him  —  when  peradventure  the  next  moment 
his  lungs  shall  crow  like  Chanticleer."     He  says  some  of  the 

10  best  things  in  the  world,  and  declareth  that  wit  is  his  aversion. 
It  was  he  who  said,  upon  seeing  the  Eton  boys  at  play  in  their 
grounds'^ —  What  a  pitij  to  think  that  these  fine  ingenuous  lads  in  a 
fcit  i/enrs  will  all  be  changed  into  frivolous  Members  of  Parliament ! 
His  youth  was  fiery,  glowing,  tempestuous  —  and  in  age  he 
"•  discovereth  no  symptom  of  cooling.  This  is  that  which  I 
admire  in  him.  I  hate  people  who  meet  Time  haKway.  I  am 
for  no  compromise  with  that  inevitable  spoiler.  VVhile  he 
lives,  J.  E.  will  take  his  swing.  —  It  does  me  good,  as  I  walk 
towards  the  street  of   my  daily  avocation,  on  some  fine  ^lay 

20  morning,  to  meet  him  marching  in  a  quite  opposite  direction, 
with  a  jolly  handsome  presence,  and  shining  sanguine  face, 
that  indicates  some  purchase  in  his  eye  —  a  Claude^ — or  a 
Hol)bima'^ — for  much  of  his  enviable  leisure  is  consumed  at 
Cln-i.stie's,  and  Phillips's  —  or  where  not,  to  pick  up  pictures, 

-".and  such  gauds.  On  these  occasions  he  mostly  stoppeth  me, 
to  read  a  short  lecture  on  the  advantage  a  person  like  me  pos- 
sesses above  himself,  in  having  his  time  occupied  with  business 
which  he  must  do — assureth  me  that  he  often  feels  it  hang 
heavy  on  his  haiuis  —  wishes  he  had  fewer  holidavs —  and  goes 

aCKotf  —  Westward  Ho  !  —  chanting  a  tune,  to  Pall  Mall  —  per- 
fectly convinced  that  he  has  convinced  me  —  while  I  proceed 
in  my  opposite  direction  tuneless. 

It  is  pleasant,  again,  to  see  this  Professor   of  Indifference 
doing  the  honours  of  his   new  purchase,  when  he  has  fairlv 

a5  housed  it.  You  must  view  it  in  every  light,  till  he  has  found 
the  best  — placing  it  at  this  distance,"'and  at  that,  but  always 
suiting  the  focus  of  your  sight  to  his  own.  You  must  spy  at^it 
through  your  fingers,  to  catch  the  aerial  perspective  —  though 
voti  assure* him  that  to  vou  the  landscape  sliows  much  more 


MY  RELATIONS  89 

agreeaDle  without  that  artifice.  Woe  be  to  the  luckless  wight 
who  does  not  only  not  respond  to  his  rapture,  but  who  should  drop 
an  unseasonable  intimation  of  preferring  one  of  his  anterior 
bargains  to  the  present !  —  The  last  is  always  his  best  hit  — 
his  "Cynthia  of  the  minute." — Alas!  how  manj^  a  mild 5 
Madonna  have  I  known  to  come  in  —  a  RaphaeP  ! — keep  its 
ascendency  for  a  few  brief  moons  —  then,  after  certain  inter- 
medial degradations,  from  the  front  drawing-room  to  the  back 
gallery,  thence  to  the  dark  parlour,  —  adopted  in  turn  by  each  of 
the  Carracci,°  under  successive  lowering  ascriptions  of  filiation,  lo 
mildly  breaking  its  fall  —  consigned  to  the  oblivious  lumber- 
room,  go  out  at  last  a  Lucca  Giordano,^  or  plain  Carlo  ]Maratti° ! 
—  which  things  when  I  beheld  —  musing  upon  the  chances  and 
mutabilities  of  fate  below  hath  made  me  to  reflect  upon  the 
altered  condition  of  great  personages,  or  that  woeful  Queen  of  15 
Ilichard  the  Second  — 

set  forth  in  pomp, 


She  came  adorned  hither  like  sweet  May ; 
Sent  back  like  Hallowmass^  or  shortesfday. 

With  great  love  for  yoUf  J.  E.  hath  but  a  limited  sympathy  20 
with  what  you  feel  or  do.     He  lives  in  a  world  of  his  own,  and 
makes  slender  guesses  at  what  passes  in  your  mind.     He  never 
pierces  the  marrow  of  jour  habits.     He  will  tell  an  old  estab- 
lished play-goer,  that  Mr.  Such-a-one,   of  So-and-so   (naming 
one  of  the*^  theatres),  is  a  very  lively  comedian —  as  a  piece  of  25 
news  !    He  advertised  me  but  the  other  day  of  some  pleasant  green 
lanes  which  he  had  found  out  for  me,  knowing  me  to  be  a  great 
walker^  in  my  own  immediate  vicinity  —  who  have  haunted  the 
identical  spot  anytime  these  twenty  years  !  —  He  has  not  much 
respect  for  that  class  of  feelings  which  goes  by  the  name  of  30 
sentimental.     He  applies  the  definition  of  real  evil  to  bodily 
sufferings  exclusively  —  and  rejecteth  all  others  as  imaginary. 
He  is  affected  by  the  sight,  or  the  bare  supposition,  of  a  creature 
in  pain,  to  a  degree  which  I  have  never  witnessed  out  of  woman- 
kind.      A   constitutional    acuteness  to  this  class  of  sufferings  35 
may  in  part  account  for  this.     The  animal  tribe  in  particular 
he  taketh  under  his  especial  protection.     A  broken-winded  or 


90  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

spur-galled  horse  is  sure  to  find  an  advocate  iu  him.  An  over- 
loaded ass  is  his  client  for  ever.  He  is  the  apostle  to  the  brute 
kiinl  —  the  never-failing  friend  of  those  who  have  none  to  care 
for  them.  The  contemplation  of  a  lobster  boiled,  or  eels 
5  skinned  ciUre.  will  wring  him  so,  that  '-all  for  pity  he  could 
die."  It  will  take  the  savour  from  his  palate,  and  the  rest 
from  his  pillow,  for  days  and  nights.  AVith  the  intense  feeling 
of  Tiiomas  Clarkson,  lie  wanted  only  the  steadiness  of  pursuit, 
and  unity  of  purpose,  of  that  ''true  yoke-fellow  with  Time,"  to 

10  have  effected  as  much  for  the  Animal,  as  he  hath  done  for  the 
Ner/ro  Creation.  But  my  uncontrollable  cousin  is  but  imper- 
fectly formed  for  purposes  which  demand  co-operation.  He 
cannot  wait.  His  amelioration -plans  must  be  ripened  in  a  day. 
For  this  reason  he  has  cut  but  an  equivocal  figure  in  benevolent 

l.">  societies,  and  combinations  for  the  alleviation  of  human  suffer- 
ings. His  zeal  constantly  makes  him  to  outrun,  and  put  out, 
his  coadjutors.  He  thinks  of  relieving,  —  while  they  think  of 
debating.  He  was  black-balled  out  of  a  society  for  the  Relief 
of        *        *        *        *         because  the  fervour  of  his  human- 

L'O  ity  toiled  beyond  the  formal  apprehension  and  creeping  pro- 
cesses of  his  associates.  I  shall  always  consider  this  distinction 
as  a  patent  of  nobility  in  the  Elia  family" ! 

Do  I  mention  these  seeming  inconsistencies  to  smile  at.  or 
upbraid,  my  unique   cousin?       Marry,    heaven,    and    all   good 

2.-)  manners,  and  the  understanding  that' should  be  between  kins- 
folk, forbid  !  —  With  all  the  stra'ngenesses  of  this  strangest  of  the 
Hlias^l  would  not  have  him  in  one  jot  or  tittle  other  than  he 
is ;  neither  would  I  barter  or  exchange  my  wild  kinsman  for  the 
most  exact,  regular,  and  every  way  consistent  kinsman  breathing. 

;^)  In  my  next.  Reader,  I  may  perhaps  give  you  some  account 
of  njy  cousin  Bridget  —  if  you  are  not  already  surfeited  with 
cousins  —  and  take  you  by 'the  hand,  if  you  are  willing  to  go 
with  us,  on  an  excursion  which  we  made  a' summer  or  two  since, 
in  search  of  more  cousins  — 

•;•'>  Through  the  greeu  plains  of  pleasant  Hertfordshire. 


IN  HERTFORDSHIRE  91 


MACKERY  END,   IX   HERTFORDSHIRE 

Bridget  Elia  has  been  my  housekeeper  for  many  a  long 
year.  I  have  obligations  to  Bridget,  extending  beyond  the 
period  of  memory.  We  house  together,  old  bachelor  and 
maid,  in  a  sort  of  double  singleness;  with  such  tolerable 
comfort,,  upon  the  whole,  that  I,  for  one,  find  in  myself  no  5 
sort  of  disposition  to  go  out  upon  the  mountains,  wdth  the 
rash  king's"^  offspring,  to  bewail  my  celibacy.  We  agree 
pretty  well  in  our  tastes  and  habits  —  yet  so,  as  "with  a 
difference."  AVe  are  generally  in  harmony,  with  occasional 
bickerings  —  as  it  should  be  among  near  relations.  Our  sym- 10 
pathies  are  rather  understood  than  expressed  ;  and  once,  upon 
my  dissembling  a  tone  in  my  voice  more  kind  than  ordinary, 
my  cousin  burst  into  tears,  and  complained  that  I  was  altered. 
We  are  both  great  readers  in  different  directions.  While  I  am 
hanging  over  (for  the  thousandth  time)  some  passage  in  old  15 
Burton,  or  one  of  his  strange  contemporaries,  she  is  abstracted 
in  some  modern  tale,  or  adventure,  whereof  our  common  reading- 
table  is  daily  fed  with  assiduously  fresh  supplies.  Narrative 
teases  me.  1  have  little  concern  in  the  progress  of  events.  She 
must  have  a  story  —  well,  ill,  or  indifferently  told  —  so  there  be  20 
life  stirring  in  it,  and  plenty  of  good  or  evil  accidents.  The 
fluctuations  of  fortune  in  fiction  —  and  almost  in  real  life  — 
have  ceased  to  interest,  or  oj^erate  but  dully  upon  me.  Out- 
of-the-way  humours  and  opinions —  heads  with  some  diverting 
twist  in  them  —  the  oddities  of  authorship,  please  me  most.  25 
J\ly  cousin  has  a  native  disrelish  of  anything  that  sounds  odd 
or  bizarre.  Nothing  goes  down  with  her  that  is  quaint,  irregu- 
lar, or  out  of  the  road  of  common  sympathy.  She  "  holds  Nature 
more  clever."  I  can  pardon  her  blindness  to  the  beautiful  obliq- 
uities of  the  Religio  Medici ;  but  she  must  apologize  to  me  for  30 
certain  disrespectful  insinuations,  which  she  has  been  pleased  to 
throw  out  latterly,  touching  the  intellectuals  of  a  dear  favourite 
of  mine,  of  the  last  century  but  one  —  the  thrice  noble,  chaste, 
and  virtuous, — but  again  somewiiat  fantastical,  and  original- 
brain 'd,  generous  Margaret  Newcastle.  35 

It  has  been  the  lot  of  my  cousin,  oftener  perhaps  than  I  could 


92  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

have  wished,  to  have  had  for  her  associates  and  mine,  free- 
thinkers—  leaders,  and  disciples,  of  novel  philosophies  and 
systems;  hnt  she  neither  wrangles  with,  nor  accepts,  their 
opinions.     That  which  was  good  and  venerable  to  her,  when 

r,  a  child,  retains  its  authority  over  her  mind  still.  She  never 
juggles  or  plays  tricks  with  her  understanding. 

AVe  are  botli  of  us  inclined  to  be  a  little  too  positive;  and  I 
have  observed  the  result  of  our  disputes  to  be  almost  uniformly 
this  —  that  in  matters  of  fact,  dates,  and  circumstances,  it  turns 

10  out,  that  I  was  in  the  right,  and  my  cousin  in  the  wrong.  But 
where  we  have  differed  upon  moral  points;  upon  something 
proper  to  be  done,  or  let  alone ;  whatever  heat  of  opposition, 
or  steadiness  of  conviction,  1  set  out  with,  I  am  sure  always,  in 
the  long-run,  to  be  brought  over  to  her  way  of  thinking. 

15  I  must  touch  upon  the  foibles  of  my 'kinswoman  with  a  gentle 
hand,  for  Bridget  does  not  like  to  be  told  of  her  faults.  She 
liath  an  awkward  trick  (to  say  no  worse  of  it)  of  reading  in 
company :  at  which  times  she  will  answer  yes  or  no  to  a  ques- 
tion, without  fully  understanding  its  purport  —  which  is  pro- 

20  yoking,  and  derogatory  in  the  highest  degree  to  the  dignity  of 
the  putter  of  the  said  question.  Her  presence  of  mind  is  equal 
to  the  most  pressing  trials  of  life,  but  will  sometimes  desert  her 
upon  trifling  occasions.  When  the  purpose  requires  it,  and  is  a 
thing  of  moment,  she  can  speak  to  it°  greatly ;  but  in  matters 

2.")  wliicli  are  not  stuff  of  the  conscience,  she  hath  been  known 
sometimes  to  let  slip  a  w^ord  less  seasonably. 

Her  education  in  youth  was  not  much  attended  to  ;  and  she 
happily  missed  all  that  train  of  female  garniture  which  passeth 
by  the  name  of  accomphshments.     She  was  tumbled  early,  by 

m  accident  or  design,  into  a  spacious  closet  of  good  old  English 
reading,^  without  much  selection  or  prohibition,  and  browsed  at 
will  upon  that  fair  and  wholesome  pasturage.  Had  I  twenty 
girls,  they  should  be  brought  up  exactly  in  this  fashion.  I 
know   not   whether   their  chance   in   wedlock    might   not  be 

;-".  diminished  by  it,  but  I  can  answer  for  it,  that  it  makes  (if  the 
worst  come  to  the  worst)  most  incomparable  old  maids. 

In  a  season  of  distress,  she  is  the  truest  comforter  ;  but  in 
the  teasing  accidents  and  minor  perplexities,  which  do  not  call 
out  the  will  to  meet  them,  she  sometimes  maketh  matters  worse 


MACKERY  EXD,  IN  HERTFORDSHIRE  93 

by  an  excess  of  participation.  If  she  does  not  always  divide 
your  trouble,  upon  the  pleasanter  occasions  of  life  she  is  sure 
always  to  treble  your  satisfaction.  She  is  excellent  to  be  at  a 
play  with,  or  upon  a  visit;  but  best,  when  she  goes  a  journey 
with  you.  5 

We  made  an  excursion  together  a  few  summers  since,  into 
Hertfordshire,  to  beat  up  the  quarters  of  some  of  our  less- 
known  relations  in  that  fine  corn  country. 

The  oldest  thing  I  remember  is  Mackery  End,  or  Mackarel 
End,  as  it  is  spelt,  perhaps  more  properly,  in  some  old  maps  of  10 
Hertfordshire ;  a  farm-house,  —  delightfully  situated  within  a 
gentle  walk  from  Wheathampstead.  I  can  just  remember  having 
been  there,  on  a  visit  to  a  great-aunt,  when  I  was  a  child,  under 
the  care  of  Bridget;  w^ho,  as  I  have  said,  is  older  than  myself 
by  some  ten  years.     I  wish  that  I  could  throw  into  a  heap  the  15 
remainder  of  our  joint  existences,  that  we  might  share  them  in 
equal  division.     But  that  is  impossible.     The  house  was  at  that 
time  in  the  occupation  of  a  substantial  yeoman,  who  had  married 
my   grandmother's   sister.       His    name    was    Gladman.       My 
grandmother  was  a  Bruton,  married  to   a  Field.     The    Glad- 20 
mans  and  the  Brutons  are  still  flourishing  in  that  part  of  the 
county,  but  the  Fields  are  almost  extinct.      More  than  forty 
years  had  elapsed    since   the   visit   I    speak   of ;  and,   for   the 
greater  portion  of  that  period,  we  had  lost  sight  of  the  other 
two  branches  also.     Who   or   what  sort   of   persons  inherited  25 
Mackery   End  —  kindred    or    strange    folk — we   were    afraid 
almost  to  conjecture,  but  determined  some  day  to  explore. 

By  somewhat  a  circuitous  route,  taking  the  noble  park  at 
Luton  in  our  way  from  Saint  Albans,  we  arrived  at  the  spot  of 
our  anxious  curiosity  about  noon.  The  sight  of  the  old  farm- 30 
house,  though  every  trace  of  it  was  effaced  from  my  recollection, 
affected  me  with  a  pleasure  which  I  had  not  experienced  for 
many  a  year.  For  though  /  had  forgotten  it,  ice  had  never 
forgotten  being  there  together,  and  we  had  been  talking 
about  Mackery  End  all  our  lives,  till  memory  on  my  part  35 
became  mocked  with  a  phantom  of  itself,  and  I  thought  I 
knew  the  aspect  of  a  place,  which,  when  present,  O  how  unlike 
it  was  to  tliat  which  I  had  conjured  up  so  many  times  instead 
of  it! 


94  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Still  the  air  breathed  balmily  about  it ;  the  season  was  in  the 
"  heart  of  June,"  and  I  could  say  with  the  poet,° 

But  thou,  that  didst  appear  so  fair 
To  fond  imagination, 
5  Dost  rival  in  the  light  of  day 

Her  delicate  creation ! 

Bridget's  was  more  a  waking  bliss°  than  mine,  for  she  easily 
remembered  her  old  acquaintance  again  —  some  altered  features, 
of  course,  a  little  grudged  at.     At  lirst,  indeed,  she  was  ready 

II)  to  disbelieve  for  joy ;  but  the  scene  soon  re-confirmed  itself  in 
her  affections  —  and  she  traversed  every  outpost  of  the  old 
mansion,  to  the  wood-house,  the  orchard,  the  place  where  the 
pigeon-house  had  stood  (house  and  birds  were  alike  flown)  — 
with  a  breathless  impatience  of  recognition,  which  was  more 

1")  pai-donable  perhaps  than  decorous  at  the  age  of  fifty  odd.  But 
Bridget  in  some  things  is  behind  her  years. 

'i'he  only  thing  left  was  to  get  into  the  house  —  and  that  was 
a  ditiiculty  which  to  me  singly  would  have  beeii  insurmount- 
able ;  for  I  am  terribly  shy  in  making  myself  known  to  strangers 

20  and  out-of-date  kinsfolk.  Love,  stronger  than  scruple,  winged 
my  cousin  in  without  me;  but  she  soon  returned  with  a  creature 
that  might  have  sat  to  a  sculptor  for  the  image  of  AVelcome. 
It  was  the  youngest  of  the  Gladmans  ;  who,  by  marriage  with  a 
Bruton,  had  become  mistress  of  the  old    mansion.     A  comely 

25  brood  are  the  Brutons.  Six  of  them,  females,  were  noted  as 
the  handsomest  young  women  in  the  county.  But  this 
adopted  Bruton,  in  my  mind,  was  better  than  tliey  all  —  more 
comely.  She  was  born  too  late  to  have  remembered  me.  She 
just  recollected  in  early  life  to  have  had  her  cousin   Bridget 

30  once  pointed  out  to  her,  climbing  a  stile.  But  the  name  of 
kindred,  and  of  coi:sinship,  was  enough.  Those  slender  ties, 
that  prove  slight  as  gossamer  in  the  rending  atmosphere  of  a 
metropolis,  bind  faster,  as  we  found  it,  in  hearty,  homelv,  loving 
Hertfordshire.    In  five  minutes  we  were  as  thoroughly  acquainted 

3.')  as  if  we  had  been  born  and  bred  up  together ;  were  familiar, 
even  to  the  calling  of  each  other  by  our  Christian  names.  So 
Christians  should  call  one  another.  To  have  seen  Bridget  and 
her  — It  was  like  the  meeting  of  the  two  scriptural  cousins^  ! 


MODERN  GALLANTRY  95 

There  was  a  grace  and  dignity,  an  amplitude  of  form  and 
stature,  answering  to  her  mind,  in  this  farmer's  wife,  which 
would  have  shined  in  a  palace  —  or  so  we  thought  it.  We 
were  made  welcome  by  husband  and  wife  equally  —  we,  and 
our  friend  that  was  with  us. —  I  had  almost  forgotten  him  —  5 
but  B.  F.°  will  not  so  soon  forget  that  meeting,  if  peradventure 
he  shall  read  this  on  the  far  distant  shores  where  the  Kangaroo 
haunts.  The  fatted  calf  was  made  ready,  or  rather  was  already 
so,  as  if  in  anticipation  of  our  coming ;  and,  after  an  appropriate 
glass  of  native  wine,  never  let  me  forget  with  what  honest  pride  10 
this  hospitable  cousin  made  us  proceed  to  Wheathanipstead, 
to  introduce  us  (as  some  new-found  rarity)  to  her  mother  and 
sister  Gladmans,  who  did  indeed  know  something  more  of  us, 
at  a  time  when  she  almost  knew  nothing.  —  With  what  cor- 
responding kindness  we  were  received  by  them  also  —  how  15 
Bridget's  memor}^,  exalted  by  the  occasion,  warmed  into  a 
thousand  half-obliterated  recollections  of  things  and  persons,  to 
my  utter  astonishment,  and  her  own —  and  to  the  astoundment 
of  B.  F.  who  sat  by,  almost  the  only  thing  that  was  not  a 
cousin  there,  —  old  effaced  images  of  more  than  half-forgotten  20 
names  and  circumstances  still  crowding  back  upon  her,  as  words 
written  in  lemon  come  out  upon  exposure  to  a  friendly  warmth, 
—  when  I  forget  all  this,  then  may  my  country  cousins  forget 
me ;  and  Bridget  no  more  remember,  that  in  the  days  of  weak- 
ling infancy  I  was  her  tender  charge —  as  I  have  been  her  care  25 
in  foolish  manhood  since  —  in  those  pretty  pastoral  walks,  long 
ago,  about  Mackery  End,  in  Hertfordshire. 


MODERN   GALLANTRY 

In  comparing  modern  with  ancient  manners,  we  are  pleased  to 
compliment  ourselves  upon  the  point  of  gallantry ;  a    certain 
obsequiousness,  or  deferential  respect,  which  we  are  supposed  30 
to  pay  to  females,  as  females. 

1  shall  believe  that  this  principle  actuates  our  conduct,  when 
I  can  forget,  that  in  the  nineteenth  century  of  the  era  from 


96  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

which  wt'  date  our  civilitv,  we  are  but  just  beginning  to  leave 
off  the  very  frequent  practice  of  whippmg  females  ni  public, 
in  common  with  the  coarsest  male  offenders. 

I  shall  believe  it  to  be  influential,  when  I  can  shut  my  eyes 
5  to  the  fact  that  in  England  women  are   still  occasionally  — 

hanged.  ^  i  •     ,    . 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  actresses  are  no  longer  subject  to 
be  hissed  off  a  stage  by  gentlemen. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  Dorimant°  hands  a  fishwife  across 
10  the  kennel ;  or  assists  the  apple-woman  to  pick  up  her  wander- 
ing fruit,  which  some  unlucky  dray  has  just  dissipated. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  the*^  Dorimauts  in  humbler  life, 
who  would  be  thought  in  their  way  notable  adepts   in   this 
refinement,  shall  act  upon  it  in   places  where   they  are   not 
15  known,  or  think  themselves  not  observed — when  I  shall  see 
the  traveller  for  some  rich  tradesman  part  with  his  admired 
"box-coat,  to  spread  it  over  the  defenceless  shoulders  of  the  poor 
woman,  who  is  passing  to  her  parish  on  the  roof  of  the  same 
stage-coach  with  him,  drenched  in  the  rain  —  when  I  shall  no 
20  longer  see  a  w^oman  standing  up  in  the  pit  of  a  London  theatre, 
till  she  is  sick  and  faint  with  the  exertion,  with  men  about  her, 
seated  at  their  ease,  and  jeering  at  her  distress;  till  one,  that 
seems  to  have  more  manners  or  conscience  than  the  rest,  sig- 
nificantly declares  "  she  should  be  w^elcome  to  his  seat,  if  she 
25  were   a   little   younger    and   handsomer."     Place   this   dapper 
warehouseman,  or  that  rider,  in  a  circle  of  their  own  female 
acquaintance,  and  you  shall  confess  you  have  not  seen  a  politer- 
bred  man  in  Lothbury, 

Lastly,  I  shall  begin  to  believe  that  there  is  some  such  prin- 
aociple  influencing  our  conduct,  Avhen  more  than  one-half  of  the 
drudgery  and  coarse  servitude  of  the  world  shall  cease  to  be 
performed  by  women. 

Until  that  day  comes,  T  shall  never  believe  this  boasted  point 
to  be  anything  more  than  a  conventional  fiction;  a  pageant 
:j5  got  up  between  the  sexes,  in  a  certain  rank,  and  at  a  certain 
time  of  life,  in  which  both  find  their  account  equally. 

I  shall  be  even  disposed  to  rank  it  among  the  salutary  fictions 
of  life,  when  in  polite  circles  I  shall  see  the  same  attentions 
paid  to  age  as  to  youth,  to  homely  features  as  to  handsome,  to 


MODERN   GALLANTRY  97 

coarse   complexions   as  to   clear  —  to  the  woman,  as  she  is  a 
woman,  not  as  she  is  a  beauty,  a  fortune,  or  a  title. 

I  sliall  believe  it  to  be  something  more  than  a  name,  when  a 
well-dressed  gentleman  in  a  well-dressed  company  can  advert  to 
the  topic  of  female  old  ar/e  without  exciting,  and  intending  to  5 
excite,  a  sneer  :  —  when  the  phrases  "  antiquated  virginity,"  and 
such  a  one  has  "  overstood  her  market,"  pronounced  in  good 
company,  shall  raise  immediate  offence  in  man,  or  woman, 
that  shall  hear  them  spoken. 

Joseph  Paice,°  of  Bread-street-hill,  merchant,  and  one  of  the  Di-  10 
rectors  of  the  South-Sea  company  —  the  same  to  whom  Edwards, 
the  Shakspeare  commentator,  has  addressed  a  fine  sonnet  —  was 
the  only  pattern  of  consistent  gallantry  I  have  met  with.    He  took 
me  under  his  shelter  at  an  early  age,  and  bestowed  some  pains  upon 
me.     I  owe  to  his  precepts  and  example  w  hatever  there  is  of  15 
the  man  of  business  (and  that  is  not  much)  in  my  composition. 
It  was  not  his  fault  that  I  did  not  profit  more.     Though  bred  a 
Presbyterian,  and  brought  up  a  merchant,  he  was  the  finest 
gentleman  of  his  time.     He  had  not  one  system  of  attention  to 
females  in  the  drawing-room,  and  another  in  the  shop,  or  at  the  20 
stall.     I   do   not  mean  that  he  made  no  distinction.     But  he 
never  lost  sight  of  sex,  or  overlooked  it  in  the  casualties  of  a 
disadvantageous  situation.     I  have  seen  him  stand  bareheaded 
—  smile  if  you  please  —  to  a  poor  servant-girl,  while  she  has 
been  inquiring  of  him  the  way  to  some  street  —  in  such  a  pos-  25 
ture    of  unforced  civility,  as  neither  to  embarrass  her  in  the 
acceptance,  nor  himself  in  the  offer,  of  it.     He  was  no  dangler, 
in  the  common  acceptation  of  the  word,  after  women  :  but  he 
reverenced  and  upheld,  in  every  form  in  which  it  came  before 
him,  ■womanhood.     I  have  seen  him —  nay,  smile  not  —  tenderly  so 
escorting  a   market-woman,  w^hom  he   had    encountered   in  a 
shower,  exalting  his  umbrella  over  her  poor  basket  of  fruit,  that 
it  might  receive  no  damage,  with  as  much  carefulness  as  if  she 
had  been  a  countess.     To  the  reverend  form  of  Female  Eld  he 
would   yield   the  wall  (though  it  w^ere  to  an  ancient  beggar- 35 
woman)  with  more  ceremony  than  we  can  afford  to  show  our 
gran  dams.      He  was  the  Preux  Chevalier°   of   Age ;    the   Sir 
Calidore,°  or  Sir  Tristan,°  to  those  w^ho  have  no  Calidores  or 
Tristans   to   defend   them.     The  roses,   that  had  long  faded 

H 


98  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

thoiice,  still  bloomed  for  him  in  those  ^vithered  and  yellow 
cheeks. 

He  was  never  married,  but  in  his  youth  he  paid  his  addresses 
to  the  beautiful  Susan  Winstanley  — old  Winstanley's  daughter 
5  of  Clapton  —  who  dying  in  the  early  days  of  their  courtship, 
confirmed  in  him  the  resolution  of  perpetual  bachelorship.  It 
was  during  their  short  courtship,  he  told  me,  that  he  had  been 
one  day  treating  his  mistress  with  a  profusion  of  civil  speeches 

—  the  common  gallantries  —  to  which  kind  of  thing  she  had 
10  hitherto  manifested  no  repugnance — but  in  this  instance  with 

no  effect.  He  could  not  obtain  from  her  a  decent  acknowledg- 
ment in  return.  She  rather  seemed  to  resent  his  compliments. 
He  could  not  set  it  down  to  caprice,  for  the  lady  had  always 
shown  herself  above  that  littleness.     When  he  ventured  on  the 

1.")  following  day,  finding  her  a  little  better  humoured,  to  exj^ostu- 
late  with  her  on  her  coldness  of  yesterday,  she  confessed,  with 
her  usual  frankness,  that  she  had  no  sort  of  dislike  to  his  atten- 
tions ;  that  she  could  even  endure  some  high-flown  compliments  ; 
that  a  young  woman  placed  in  her  situation  had  a  right  to 

20 expect  all  sorts  of  civil  things  said  to  her;  that  she  hoped  she 
could  digest  a  dose  of  adulation,  short  of  insincerity,  with  as 
little  injury  to  her  humility  as  most  young  women;  but  that 

—  a  little  before  he  had  commenced  his  compliments  —  she  had 
overheard  him  by  accident,  in  rather  rough  language,  rating 

J.-)  a  young  woman,  who  had  not  brought  home  his  cravats  quite 
lO  the  appointed  time,  and  she  thought  to  herself,  "  As  I  am 
Miss  Susan  Winstanley,  and  a  young  lady — a  reputed  beauty, 
and  known  to  be  a  fortune,  —  I  can  have  my  choice  of  the  fin- 
est speeches  from  the  mouth  of  this  very  fine  gentleman  who  is 
'•courting  me  —  but  if  I  had  been  poor  Mary  Such-a-one  {naming 
the  milliner),  —  and  had  failed  of  bringing'  home  the  cravats  to 
the  appointed  hour  —  though  perhaps  I  had  sat  up  half  the 
night  to  forward  them  —  what  sort  of  compliments  should  I 
have   received   then? — And  my  woman's    pride   came  to  my 

35  assistance ;  and  I  thought,  that  if  it  were  only  to  do  me  honour,  a 
female,  like  myself,  might  have  received  handsomer  usage;  and 
I  was^  determined  not  to  accept  any  fine  speeches  to  the  com- 
promise of  that  sex,  the  belonging  "^to  which  was  after  all  my 
strongest  claim  and  title  to  them." 


MODERN  GALLANTRY  99 

I  think  the  lady  discovered^  both  generosity,  and  a  just  way 
of  thinking,  in  this  rebuke  ^yhich  she  gave  her  lover;  and  I 
have  sometimes  imagined,  that  the  uncommon  strain  of  cour- 
tesy, which  through  life  regulated  the  actions  and  behaviour 
of  my  friend  towards  all  of  womankind  indiscriminately,  owed  5 
its  happy  origin  to  this  seasonable  lesson  from  the  lips  of  his 
lamented  mistress. 

I  wish  the  whole  female  world  would  entertain  the  same 
notion  of  these  things  that  Miss  Win  Stanley  show'ed.  Then 
we  should  see  something  of  the  spirit  of  consistent  gallantry ;  10 
and  no  longer  witiiessthe  anomaly  of  the  same  man  —  a  pattern 
of  true  politeness  to  a  wife  —  of  cold  contempt,  or  rudeness, 
to  a  sister  —  the  idolater  of  his  female  mistress  —  the  dis- 
parager and  despiser  of  his  no  less  female  aunt,  or  unfortu- 
nate—  still  female  —  maiden  cousin.  Just  so  much  respect  as  a  15 
woman  derogates  from  her  own  sex,  in  whatever  condition  placed 
—  her  handmaid,  or  dependent  —  she  deserves  to  have  dimin- 
ished from  herself  on  that  score;  and  probably  will  feel  the 
diminution,  when  youth,  and  beauty,  and  advantages,  not 
inseparable  from  sex,  shall  lose  of  their  attraction.  What  a20 
woman  should  demand  of  a  man  in  courtship,  or  after  it,  is 
first — respect  for  her  as  she  is  a  woman ;  —  and  next  to  that  —  to 
be  respected  by  him  above  all  other  women.  But  let  her  stand 
upon  her  female  character  as  upon  a  foundation  ;  and  let  the 
attentions,  incident  to  individual  preference,  be  so  many  pretty  25 
additaments  and  ornaments  —  as  many,  and  as  fanciful,  as  you 
please  —  to  that  main  structure.  Let  her  first  lesson  be  —  with 
s\>eet  Susan  Wiustanley  —  to  reverence  her  sex. 


THE  OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  IXXER  TEMPLE 

I  WAS  born,  and  passed  the  first  seven  years  of  my  life,  in  the 
Temple.    Its  church,  its  halls,  its  gardens,  its  fountains,  its  river,  30 
I  had  almost  said  —  for  in  those  young  years,  what  was  this 
king  of  rivers  to  me  but  a  stream  that  watered  our  pleasant 
places?  —  these  are  of  my  oldest  recollections.    I  repeat,  to  this 


100  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

(lay,  no  verses  to  myself  more  frequently,  or  with  kindlier  emo- 
tion, than  those  of  Spenser,  where  he  speaks  of  this  spot. 

There  when  they  came,  whereas  those  bricky  towers, 
The  which  on  Themmes  brode  aged  back  doth  ride, 
Whore  now  the  studious  lawyers  have  their  bowers, 
There  whylome  wont  the  Teinpler  knights  to  bide, 
Till  they  decay 'd  through  pride. 

Indeed,  it  is  the  most  elegant  spot  in  the  metropolis.  What 
a  transition  for  a  countryman  visiting  London  for  the  first  time 

lo  —  the  piissingfrom  the  crowded  Strand  or  Fleet-street,  by  unex- 
j)ect^d  avenues,  into  its  magnificent  ample  squares,  its  classic 
green  recesses  !  What  a  cheerful,  liberal  look  hath  that  portion 
of  it,  which,  from  three  sides,  overlooks  the  gTeater  garden ;  that 
uoodlv  i>ile 

1  Of  building  strong,  albeit  of  Paper  hight,° 

conlronting  with  massy  contrast,  the  lighter,  older,  more  fan- 
tastically-shrouded one,  named  of  Harcourt.  with  the  cheerful 
Crown -office-row  (place  of  my  kindly°  engendure),  right  op- 
posite the  stately  stream,  which  washes  the  garden-foot  with  her 

20  yet  scarcely  trade-polluted  waters,  and  seems  but  just  weaned 
from  her  Twickenham  Xaiades° !  a  man  would  give  something 
to  have  been  born  in  such  places.  AVhat  a  collegiate  aspect  ha"s 
that  fine  Elizal>ethan  hall,  where  the  fountain  plavs,  which  1 
have  made  to  rise  and  fall,  how  many  times !  to  the  astound- 

2."»  ment  of  the  young  urchins,  my  contemporaries,  who,  not  being 
able  to  guess  at  its  recondite  inachinery,  were  almost  tempted 
to  hail  the  wondrous  work  as  magic  !  What  an  antique  air  had 
tlie  now  almost  effaced  sun-dials,  with  their  moral  inscriptions, 
seeming  coevals  with  that  Time  which  thev  measured,  and  to 

•"take  their  revelations  of  its  flight  immediatelv  from  heaven, 
liolding  correspondence  with  the  fountain  of  light !  How  would 
the  «lark  line  steal  imperceptibly  on,  watched  bv  the  eve  of 
childhoo«l.  eager  to  detect  its  movement,  never  catched,  nice  as 
an  evanescent  cloud,  or  the  first  arrests  of  sleep ! 

^'  Ah !  yet  doth  beauty  like  a  dial  hand 

Steal  from  his  figure,  and  no  pace  perceived! 


THE   OLD   BENCHERS   OF  THE  INNER   TEMPLE      101 

What  a  dead  thing  is  a  clock,  with  its  ponderous  embowel- 
ments  of  lead  and  brass,  its  pert  or  solemn  dulness  of  coni- 
mnnication,  compared  with  the  simple  altar-like  structure  and 
silent  heart-language  of  the  old  dial !  It  stood  as  the  garden 
god  of  Christian  gardens.  Why  is  it  almost  everywhere  van- 5 
ished?  If  its  business-use  be  superseded  by  more  elaborate 
inventions,  its  moral  uses,  its  beauty,  might  have  pleaded  for 
its  continuance.  It  spoke  of  moderate  labours,  of  pleasures 
not  protracted  after  sunset,  of  temperance,  and  good  hours.  It 
was  the  primitive  clock,  the  horologe  of  the  first  world.  Adam  10 
could  scarce  have  missed  it  in  Paradise.  It  was  the  measure 
appropriate  for  sweet  x^lants  and  flowers  to  spring  by,  for  the 
birds  to  apportion  their  silyer  warblings  by,  for  flocks  to  pas- 
ture and  be  led  to  fold  by.  The  shepherd  "carved  it  out 
quaintly  in  the  sun  ; "  and,  turning  philosopher  by  the  very  15 
occuj)ation,  proyided  it  with  mottoes  more  touching  than  tomb- 
stones. It  was  a  pretty  deyice  of  the  gardener,  recorded  by 
Marvell,"  who,  in  the  days  of  artificial  gardening,  made  a  dial 
out  of  herbs  and  flowers.  I  must  quote  his  verses  a  little  higher 
up,  for  they  are  full,  as  all  his  serious  poetry  was,  of  a  witty  20 
delicacy.  They  will  not  come  in  awkwardly,  I  hope,  in  a  talk 
of  fountains  and  sun-dials.  He  is  speaking  of  sweet  garden 
scenes :  — 

What  wondrous  life  is  this  I  lead! 

Ripe  apples  drop  about  my  head.  25 

The  luscious  clusters  of  the  vine 

Upon  my  mouth  do  crush  their  wine. 

The  nectarine,  and  curious  peach, 

Into  my  hands  themselves  do  reach. 

Stumbling  on  melons,  as  I  pass,  30 

Insnared  with  flowers,  I  fall  on  grass. 

Meanwhile  the  mind  from  pleasure  less 

"Withdraws  into  its  happiness. 

The  mind,  that  ocean,  where  each  kind 

Does  straight  its  own  resemblance  find ;  35 

Yet  it  creates,  transcending  these, 

Far  other  worlds,  and  other  seas ; 

Annihilating  all  that's  made 

To  a  green  thought  in  a  gi-een  shade. 

Here  at  the  fountain's  sliding  foot  40 

Or  at  some  fruit-tree's  mossy  root, 

Casting  the  body's  vest  aside, 


102  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

My  soul  into  the  boughs  does  glide ; 
There,  like  a  bird,  it  sits  and  sings, 
Then  whets  and  claps  its  silver  wings, 
And.  till  prepared  for  longer  flight, 
-  AVaves  in  its  plumes  the  various  light. 

How  well  the  skilful  gardener  drew, 
Of  flowers,  and  herbs,  this  dial  new! 
Where,  from  above,  the  milder  sun 
Does  through  a  fragrant  zodiac  run : 
jQ  And,  as  it  works,  the  industrious  bee 

Computes  its  time  as  well  as  we. 
How  could  such  sweet  and  wholesome  hours 
Be  reckoned,  but  with  herbs  and  flowers  ?i 

The  artificial  fountains  of  the  metropolis  are,  in  like  manner, 

1')  fast  vanishing.  Most  of  them  are  dried  up  or  bricked  over.  Yet, 
where  one  is  left,  as  in  that  little  green  nook  behind  the  Soiith- 
Sea  House,  what  a  freshness  it  gives  to  the  dreary  pile  I  Four 
little  winged  marble  boys  used  to  play  their  virgin  fancies, 
spouting  out  ever  fresh  streams  from   their   innocent-wanton 

2~)  lips,  in  the  square  of  Lincoln's-inn,  when  I  was  no  bigger  than 
they  were  figured.  They  are  gone,  and  the  spring  choked  up. 
The  fashion,  they  tell  me,  is  gone  by,  and  these  things  are 
esteemed  childish.  Why  not  then  gratify  children,  by  letting 
them  stand?     Lawyers,  I  suppose,  were  children  once.     They 

-•"5  are  awakening  images  to  them  at  least.  Why  must  everything 
smack  of  man,  and  mannish?  Is  the  ^vorld  all  gTOwn  up?  Is 
childhood  dead  ?  Or  is  there  not  in  the  bosoms  of  the  wisest 
and  the  best  some  of  the  child's  heart  left,  to  respond  to  its 
earliest  enchantments?     The  figures  were  grotesque.     Are  the 

oO  stiff-wigged  living  figures,  that  still  flitter  and  chatter  about 
that  area,  less  Gothic  in  appearance?  or  is  the  splutter  of  their 
hot  rhetoric  one-half  so  refreshing  and  innocent  as  the  little 
cool  playful  streams  those  exploded  cherubs  uttered? 

They  liave  lately  gothicized  the  entrance  to  the  Inner  Temple- 

35  hall,  and  the  library  front ;  to  assimilate  them.  I  suppose,  to  the 
body  of  the  hall,  which  they  do  not  at  all  resemble.  What  is 
become  of  the  winged  horse  that  stood  over  the  former?  a 
stately  arms!  and  who  has  removed  those  frescoes  of  the  Yir- 
tues,  which  Italianized  the  end  of  the  Paper-buildings?  — my 

1  From  a  copy  of  verses  entitled  The  Garden. 


THE   OLD  BENCHERS   OF   THE  INNER   TEMPLE       103 

first    hint  of   allegory!     They  must  account   to  me  for  these 
things,  which  I  miss  so  greatly. 

The  terrace  is,  indeed,  left,  which  we  used  to  call  the  parade; 
but  the  traces  are  passed  away  of  the  footsteps  which  made  its 
pavement  awful !  It  is  become  common  and  profane.  'Jlie  old  5 
benchers  had  it  almost  sacred  to  themselves,  in  the  forepart  of 
the  day  at  least.  They  might  not  be  sided  or  jostled.  Their 
air  and  dress  asserted  the  parade.  You  left  wide  spaces  be- 
twixt you,  when  you  jiassed  them.     We  walk  on  even  terms 

with  their  successors.     The  roguish  eye  of  J 11,  ever  ready  10 

to  be  delivered  of  a  jest,  almost  invites  a  stranger  to  vie  a  re- 
partee with  it.  But  what  insolent  familiar  durst  have  mated 
Thomas  Coventry?  —  whose  person  was  a  quadrate,  his  step 
massy  and  elephantine,  his  face  square  as  the  lion's,  his  gait 
peremptory  and  path-keeping,  indivertible  from  his  way  as  a  15 
moving  column,  the  scarecrow  of  his  inferiors,  the  browbeater 
of  equals  and  superiors,  who  made  a  solitude  of  children  wherever 
he  came,  for  they  fled  his  insufferable  presence,  as  they  would 
have  shunned  an  Elisha°  bear.  His  growl  was  as  thunder  in 
their  ears,  whether  he  spake  to  them  in  mirth  or  in  rebuke ;  20 
his  invitatory  notes  being,  indeed,  of  all,  the  most  repulsive  and 
horrid.  Clouds  of  snuff,  aggravating  the  natural  terrors  of  his 
speech,  broke  from  each  majestic  nostril,  darkening  the  air.  He 
took  it,  not  by  pinches,  but  a  palmf ul  at  once,  diving  for  it  under 
the  mighty  flaps  of  his  old-fashioned  waistcoat  pocket ;  his  waist-  25 
coat  red  and  angry,  his  coat  dark  rappee,  tinctured  by  dye  original, 
and  by  adj uncts,  with  buttons  of  obsolete  gold.  And  so  he  paced 
the  terrace. 

By  his  side  a  milder  form  was  sometimes  to  be  seen  ;  the 
pensive  gentility  of  Samuel  Salt.  They  were  coevals,  and  had  30 
nothing  but  that  and  their  benchership  in  common.  In  politics 
Salt  was  a  whig,  and  Coventry  a  staunch  tory.  Many  a  sar- 
castic growl  did  the  latter  cast  out  —  for  Coventry  had  a  rough 
spinous°  humour  —  at  the  political  confederates  of  his  associate, 
which  rebounded  from  the  gentle  bosom  of  the  latter  like  35 
cannon-balls  from  wool.     You  could  not  ruffle  Samuel  Salt. 

S.  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  very  clever  man,  and  of 
excellent  discernment  in  the  chamber  practice  of  the  law.  I 
suspect  his  knowledge  did  not  amount  to  much.     When  a  case 


\{)\  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

of  (liJficiilt  disposition  of  money,  testamentary  or  otherwise, 
came  before  him,  he  ordinarily  handed  it  over  with  a  few 
instructions  to  his  man  Lovel,°  who  was  a  quick  little  fellow, 
and  would  despatch  it  out  of  hand  by  the  light  of  natural  under- 
5  standing,  of  which  he  had  an  uncommon  share.  It  was  in- 
credible what  repute  for  talents  S.  enjoyed  by  the  mere  trick  of 
ijravity.  He  was  a  shy  man  ;  a  child  might  pose  him  in  a 
minute  —  indolent  and  procrastinating  to  the  last  degree.  Yet 
men  would  give  him   credit  for  vast  application,  in    spite  of 

10  himself.  He  was  not  to  be  trusted  with  himself  with  impunity. 
He  never  dressed  for  a  dinner  party  but  he  forgot  his  sword  — 
they  wore  swords  then  —  or  some  other  necessary  part  of  his 
equipage.  Lovel  had  his  eye  upon  him  on  all  these  occasions, 
and  ordinarily  gave  him  his  cue.     If  there  was  anj^thiug  which 

ir>  he  could  speak  unseasonably,  he  was  sure  to  do  it.  —  He  was  to 
dine  at  a  relative's  of  the  unfortunate  Miss  Blandy  on  the  day 
of  her  execution; — and  L.,  who  had  a  wary  foresight  of  his 
probable  hallucinations,  before  he  set  out,  schooled  him  with 
great  anxiety,  not  in  any  possible  manner  to  allude  to  her  story 

20  that  day.  S.  promised  faithfully  to  observe  the  injunction. 
He  had  not  been  seated  in  the  parlour,  where  the  company  was 
expecting  the  dinner  summons,  four  minutes,  when,  a  pause  in 
the  conversation  ensuing,  he  got  up,  looked  out  of  window,  and 
pidling  down  his  rutfles  —  an    ordinary    motion   with    him  — 

•-.  oliserved,  '"it  was  a  gloomy  day,"  and  added,  "Miss  Blandy 
must  l)e  hanged  by  this  time,  I  suppose."  Instances  of  this  sort 
were  perpetual.  "Yet  S.  was  thought  by  some  of  the  greatest 
men  of  his  time  a  fit  person  to  be  consulted,  not  alone  in  matters 
pertaining  to  the  law,  but  in  the  ordinary  niceties  and  embar- 

^)r<issments  of  conduct — from  force  of  manner  entirely.  He 
never  laughed.  He  had  the  same  good  fortune  among  the 
female  world, —  was  a  known  toast  with  the  ladies,  and  one  or 
two  are  said  to  have  died  for  love  of  him  —  I  suppose,  because 
he  never  trifled  or  talked  gallantly  with  them,  or  paid  them, 

.;-,  indeed,  hardly  common  attentions.  He  had  a  fine  face  and 
person,  but  w\anted.  methought,  the  spirit  that  should  have 
shown  them  off  with  advantage  to  the  women.     His  eye  lacked 

lustre.  —-  Not  so.  thought  Susan  P ;  who,  at  the  advanced 

age  of  sixty,  was  seen,  in  the  cold  evening  time,  unaccompanied, 


THE   OLD   BENCHERS   OF   THE  INNER    TEMPLE     105 

wetting  the  pavement  of  B d  Row,  with  tears  that  fell  in 

drops  which  might  be  heard,  because  her  friend  had  died  that 
day  —  he,  whom  she  had  pursued  with  a  hopeless  passion  for  the 
last  forty  years —  a  passion  which  years  could  not  extinguish  or 
abate ;  nor  the  long  resolved,  yet  gently  enforced,  puttings  off  5 
of  unrelenting  bachelorhood  dissuade  from  its  cherished  purpose. 
Mild  Susan  P ,  thou  hast  now  thy  friend  in  heaven ! 

Thomas  Coventry  was  a  cadet  of  the  noble  family  of  that 
name.     He  passed  his  youth  in  contracted  circumstances,  which 
gave  him  early  those  parsimonious  habits  which  in  after  life  10 
never  forsook  him ;  so  that,  with  one  windfall  or  another,  about 
the  time  I  knew"  him  he  was  master  of  four  or  five  hundred 
thousand  pounds ;   nor  did  he  look,  or  walk,  worth  a  moidore 
less.     He  lived  in  a  gloomy  house  opposite  the  pump  in  Ser- 
jeant's-inn,  Fleet-street.     J.,  the  counsel,  is  doing  self-imposed  15 
penance  in  it,  for  what  reason  I  divine  not,  at  this  day.     C. 
had  an  agreeable  seat  at  Xorth  Cray,  where  he  seldom  spent 
above  a  day  or  two  at  a  time  in  the  summer ;  but  preferred, 
during  the  hot  months,  standing  at  his  window  in  this  damp, 
close,  well-like  mansion,  to  watch,  as  he  said,  "the  maids  draw- 20 
ing  water  all  day  long."      I   suspect  he  had   his  within-door 
reasons  for  the  preference.      Hie  currus   et   anna  /uere.°      He 
might  think  his  treasures  more  safe.     His  house  had  the  aspect 
of  a  strong  box.     C.  was  a  close  hunks  —  a  hoarder  rather  than 
a  miser — or,  if  a  miser,  none  of  the  mad  Elwes°  breed,  who  25 
have  brought   discredit  upon   a  character  which  cannot  exist 
without  certain   admirable  points  of  steadiness   and  unity  of 
purpose.     One  may  hate  a  true  miser,  but  cannot,  I  suspect,  so 
easily  despise  him.     By  taking  care  of  the  pence,  he  is  often 
enabled  to  part  with  the  pounds,  upon  a  scale  that  leaves  us  30 
careless  generous  fellows  halting  at  an  immeasurable  distance 
behind.     C.gave  away  30,000/.  at  once  in  his  lifetime  to  a  blind 
charity.     His  housekeeping  was  severely  looked  after,  but  he 
kept  the  table  of  a  gentleman.     He  Avould  know  who  came  in 
and  who  went  out  of  his  house,  but  his  kitchen  chimney  was  35 
never  suffered  to  freeze. 

Salt  was'  liis  opposite  in  this,  as  in  all  — never  knew  what  he 
was  worth  in  the  world  ;  and  having  but  a  competency  for  his 
rank,  which  his  indolent  habits  were  little  calculated  to  improve. 


106  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

might  have  siiifered  severely  if  he  had  not  had  honest  people 
about  him.  Lovel  took  care  of  everything.  He  was  at  once 
his  clerk,  his  good  servant,  his  dresser,  his  friend,  his  '•  flapper,"^ 
his  guide,  stop-watch,  auditor,  treasurer.  He  did  ncjtliing  with- 
o  out  consulting  Lovel,  or  failed  in  anything  without  expecting 
and  fearing  his  admonishing.  He  put  himself  almost  too  much 
in  his  hands,  had  they  not  been  the  purest  in  the  world.  He 
resigned  his  title  almost  to  respect  as  a  master,  if  L.  could  ever 
have  forgotten  for  a  moment  that  he  was  a  servant. 

10  I  knew  this  Lovel.  He  was  a  man  of  an  incorrigible  and  los- 
ing honesty.  A  good  fellow  withal,  and  "  would  strike."  In  the 
cause  of  the  oppressed  he  never  considered  inequalities,  or  calcu- 
lated the  number  of  his  opponents.  He  once  wrested  a  sword 
out  of  the  hand  of  a   man    of  quality  that  had  drawn   upon 

15  him,  and  pommelled  him  severely  with  the  hilt  of  it.  The 
swordsman  had  offered  insult  to  a  female  —  an  occasion  upon 
which  no  odds  against  him  could  have  prevented  the  inter- 
ference of  Lovel.  He  would  stand  next  day  bareheaded  to  the 
same  person,  modestly  to  excuse  his  interference  —  for  L.  never 

20  forgot  rank,  where  something  better  was  not  concerned.  L. 
was  the  liveliest  little  fellow  breathing,  had  a  face  as  gay  as 
Garrick's,  whom  he  was  said  greatly  to  resemble  (I  have  a 
portrait  of  him  which  confirms  it),  possessed  a  fine  turn  for 
humorous     poetry  —  next     to     Swift    and    Prior*^  —  moulded 

25  heads  in  clay  or  jjlaster  of  Paris  to  admiration,  by  the  dint  of 
natural  genius  merely  ;  turned  cribbage-boards,  and  such  small 
cabinet  toys,  to  perfection ;  took  a  hand  at  quadrille  or  bowls 
with  equal  facility ;  made  punch  better  than  any  man  of  his 
degree  in  England ;  had  the  merriest  quips  and  conceits;  and 

30  was  altogether  as  brimful  of  rogueries  and  inventions  as  you 
could  desire.  He  was  a  brother  of  the  angle,  moreover,  and 
just  such  a  free,  hearty,  honest  companion  as  Mr.  Izaak  Walton 
would  have  chosen  to'^go  a  fishing  with.  I  saw  him  in  his  old 
age  and   the  decay  of  his  faculties,  palsy-smitten,  in  the  last 

,".5  sad  stage  of  human  weakness  —  "a  remnant  most  forlorn  of 
what  he  was,''  —  yet  even  then  his  eye  would  light  up  upon  the 
mention  of  his  favourite  Garrick.  He  was  greatest,  he  would 
say,  in  Bayes — '-was  upon  the  stage  nearly  throughout  the 
whole  ijerformance,  and  as  busy  as  a  bee."     At  intervals,  too, 


TIIK   OLD   BENCHERS   OF    THE  INNhR   TEMPLE     107 

lie  would  speak  of  his  former  life,  and  how  he  came  up  a  little 
boy  from  j^iiicoln  to  go  to  service,  and  how'  his  mother  cried  at 
parting  witli  iiim,  and  how  he  returned,  after  some  few  years 
absence,  in  his  smart  new  livery  to  see  her,  and  she  blest  her- 
self at  the  change,  and  could  hardly  be  brought  to  believe  that  it  5 
was  "  her  own  bairn."  And  then,  the  excitement  subsiding,  he 
would  weep,  till  1  have  wished  that  sad  second-childhood  might 
have  a  mother  still  to  lay  its  head  upon  her  lap.  But  the  com- 
mon mother  of  us  all  in  no  long  time  after  received  him  gently 
into  hers.  10 

With  Coventry  an<l  with  Salt,  in  their  walks  upon  the  ter- 
race, most  commonly  Peter  Pierson  would  join,  to  make  up  a 
third.  They  did  not  walk  Hnked  arm-in-arm  in  those  days  — 
"  as  now  our  stout  triumvirs  sweep  the  streets,"  —  but  generally 
with  both  hands  folded  behind  them  for  state,  or  with  one  at  15 
least  behind,  the  other  carrying  a  cane.  P.  was  a  benevolent, 
but  not  a  prepossessing  man.  He  had  that  in  his  face  which 
you  could  not  term  unhappiness;  it  rather  implied  an  inca- 
pacity of  being  happy.  His  cheeks  were  colourless,  even  to 
whiteness.  His  look  was  uninviting,  resembling  (but  without 20 
his  sourness)  that  of  our  great  philanthropist.  I  know  that  he 
<Hd  good  acts,  but  T  could  never  make  out  what  he  loas.  Con- 
temporary with  these,  but  subordinate,  was  Daines  Barrington 
—  another  oddity  —  he  walked  burly  and  square  —  in  imitation, 
T  think,  of  Coventry  —  liowbeit  he  attained  not  to  the  dignity  25 
of  his  prototype.  Nevertheless,  he  did  pretty  well,  upon  the 
strength  of  being  a  tolerable  antiquarian,  and  having  a  brother 
a  bisho]i.  When  the  account  of  his  year's  treasurei'ship  came 
to  be  audited,  the  following  singular  charge  was  unanimously 
disallowed  by  the  bench  :  "  Item,  disbursed  ]\Ir.  Allen,  the  30 
gardener,  twenty  shillings,  for  stuff  to  poison  the  sparrows,  by 
my  orders."  Next  to  him  was  old  Barton  —  a  jolly  negation, 
who  took  u]xin  him  the  ordering  of  the  bills  of  fare  for  the 
])a.i-liament  chamber,  where  the  bencliers  dine  —  ausw^ering  to 
the  combination  rooms  at  college  —  nnich  to  the  easement  of  35 
his  less  epicurean  brethren.  I  know^  nothing  more  of  him. — 
Then  Bead,  and  Twopenny  —  Bead,  good-humoured  and  per- 
sonable—  Twopenny,  good-humoured,  but  thin,  and  felicitous 
in  jests  upon   his  own  figure.     If  T.   was   thin,  Wliarry  was 


108  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

attentuated  and  fleeting.     Many  must  remember  him  (for  he 
was  rather  of  later  date)   and  his  singular  gait,   which  was 
performed   by  three   steps   and   a  jump  regularly  succeeding. 
The  steps  were  little  efforts,  like  that  of  a  child  beginning  to 
5  walk;  the  jump  comparatively  vigorous,  as  a  foot  to  an  inch. 
Where  he  learned  this  figure,  or  what  occasioned  it,  I  could 
never  discover.     It  was  neither  graceful  in  itself,  nor  seemed 
to  answer  the  purpose  any  better  than  common  walking.     The 
extreme  tenuity  of  his  frame,  I  suspect,  set  him  upon  it.     It 
10  was  a  trial  of  poising.     Twopenny  would  often  rally  him  upon 
his  leanness,  and  hail  him  as  Brother  Lusty ;   but  W.  had  no 
relish  of  a  joke.  .  His  features  were  spiteful.     I  have  heard 
that  he  would  pinch  his  cat's  ears  extremely,  when  anything 
had  offended  him.     Jackson  —  the  omniscient  Jackson,  he  was 
15  called  —  was  of  this  period.     He  had  the  reputation  of  possess- 
ing more  multifarious  knowledge  than  any  man  of  his  time. 
He  was  the  Friar  Bacon°  of  the  less  literate  portion  of   the 
Temple.     I  remember  a  pleasant  passage  of  the  cook  applying 
to  him,  with  much  formality  of  apology,  for  instructions  how  to 
20  write  down  edge  bone  of  beef  in  his  bill  of  commons.     He  w^as 
supposed  to  know,  if  any  man  in  the  world  did.     He  decided 
the  orthography  to  be  —  as  I  have   given   it  —  fortifying  his 
authority    with    such   anatomical   reasons    as   dismissed    the 
manciple  (for  the  time)  learned  and  happy.     Some  do  spell  it 
25  yet,  perversely,  fa7c/i  bone,  from  a  fanciful  resemblance  between 
its   shape   and   that   of  the  aspirate  so  denominated.     I  had 
almost  forgotten  Mingay  with  the   iron    hand  —  but   he   was 
somewhat  later.     He  had  lost  his  right  hand  by  some  accident, 
and  supplied  it  with  a  gTappling-hook,  which  he  wielded  with  a 
:•.<)  tolerable  adroitness.     I  detected  the  substitute  before  I  was 
old   enough  to   reason    whether  it   were    artificial  or  not.     I 
remember  the    astonishment  it   raised   in   me.        He   was    a 
blustering,  loud-talking  person  ;  and  I  reconciled  the  phenome- 
non to  my  ideas  as   an  emblem   of   power  —  somewhat    like 
:\o  the  horns  in  the  forehead  of  ^Michael  Angelo's  Moses.°     Baron 
Maseres,°  who  walks  (or  did  till  very  lately)  in  the  costume  of 
the  reign  of  George  the  Second,  closes  my  imperfect  recollections 
of  the  old  benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple. 

Fantastic  forms,  whither  are  ye  fled  ?     Or,  if  the  like  of  you 


THE   OLD    BENCHERS   OF   THE  INNER    TEMPLE      109 

exist,  wliy  exist  they  no  more  for  me?  Ye  inexplicable,  half- 
understood  appearances,  why  comes  in  reason  to  tear  away  the 
preternatural  mist,  bright  or  gloomy,  that  enshrouded  you? 
Why  make  ye  so  sorry  a  figure  in  my  relation,  who  made  up  to 
me —  to  my  childish  eyes  —  the  mythology  of  the  Temple  ?  In  5 
those  days  I  saw  Gods,  as  "  old  men  covered  with  a  mantle," 
walking  upon  the  earth.  Let  the  dreams  of  classic  idolatry 
perish,  —  extinct  be  the  fairies  and  fairy  trumpery  of  legendary 
fabling,  —  in  the  heart  of  childhood  there  will,  for  ever,  spring 
np  a  well  of  innocent  or  wholesome  superstition  —  the  seeds  of  10 
exaggeration  will  be  busy  there,  and  vital  —  from  every-day 
forms  educing  the  unknown  and  the  uncommon.  In  that  little 
Goshen  there  will  be  light,  when  tlie  grown  world  flounders 
about  in  the  darkness  of  sense  and  materiality.  While  child- 
hood, and  while  dreams,  reducing  childhood,  shall  be  left,  15 
imagination  shall  not  have  spread  her  holy  wings  totally  to  fly 
the  earth. 

P.S.  —  I  have  done  injustice  to  the  soft  shade  of  Samuel  Salt. 
See  what  it  is  to  trust  to  imperfect  memory,  and  the  erring 
notices  of  childhood  !  Yet  I  protest  I  always  thought  that  he  20 
had  been  a  bachelor !  This  gentleman,  R.  N.°  informs  me, 
married  young,  and  losing  his  lady  in  childbed,  within  the  first 
year  of  their  union,  fell  into  a  deep  melancholy,  from  the  effects 
of  which,  probably,  he  never  thoroughly  recovered.  In  what  a 
new  light  does  this  place  his  rejection   (O  call  it  by  a  gentler  25 

name  !)  of  mild  Susan  P ,  unravelling  into  beauty  certain 

peculiarities  of  this  very  shy  and  retiring  character  !  —  Hence- 
forth let  no  one  receive  the  narratives  of  Elia  for  true  records  ! 
They  are,  in  truth,  but  shadows  of  fact — verisimilitudes,  not 
verities  —  or  sitting  but  upon  the  remote  edges  and  outskirts  30 
of  history.  He  is  no  such  honest  chronicler  as  R.  N.,  and 
would  have  done  better  perhaps  to  have  consulted  that  gentle- 
man, before  he  sent  these  incondite  reminiscences  to  press. 
But  the  worthy  sub-treasurer  —  who  respects  his  old  and  his 
new  masters  —  would  but  have  been  puzzled  at  the  indecorous  35 
liberties  of  Elia.  The  good  man  wots°  not,  peradventure,  of 
the  licence  which  Magazines  have  arrived  at  in  this  plain-speak- 
ing age,  or  hardly  dreams  of  their  existence  beyond  the  Gentle- 


110  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

man's his  furthest  monthly  excursions  in  this  nature  haA'iiii^ 

}>een  long  contined  to  the  holy  ground  of  honest  Urban  s 
obituary."  May  it  be  long  before  his  own  name  shall  help  to 
swell  those  columns  of   unenvied  flattery!  —  Meantime,  O  ye 

:.  Xt'W  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple,  cherish  him  kindly,  for 
lie  is  himself  the  kindliest  of  human  creatures.  Should  infirmi- 
ties overtake  him  —  he  is  yet  in  green  and  vigorous  senility  — 
nnike  allowances  for  them,  remembering  that  "ye  yourselves  are 
oM."      So  may  the  AVinged  Horse,  your  ancient  badge    and 

ioeognizauce,  still  flourish  !  so  may  future  Hookers°  and  Seldens 
illustrate  your  church  and  chambers!  so  may  the  sparrows,  in 
default  of  more  melodious  quiristers,  unpoisoned  hop  about 
your  walks !  so  may  the  fresh-coloured  and  cleanly  nursery-maid, 
"who,  by  leave,  airs"^  her  playful  charge  in  your  stately  gardens, 

l.ldrop  her  prettiest  blushing  curtesy  as  ye  pass,  reductive  of 
juvenescent  emotion!  so  may  the  younkers°  of  this  generation 
eye  you,  pacing  your  stately  terrace,  with  the  same  superstitious 
veneration,  with  which  the  child  Elia  gazed  on  the  Old  Worthies'^ 
that  solemnized  the  parade  before  ye  I 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT 

2f>  The  custom  of  saying  grace  at  meals  had,  probably,  its  origin 
in  the  early  times  of  the  world,  and  the  hnnter-state  of  man, 
when  dinners  were  precarious  things,  and  a  full  meal  w^as 
something  more  than  a  common  blessing;  when  a  bell^'ful  was 
a  wind-fail,  and  looked  like  a  special  providence.     In  the  shouts 

2.") and  triumphal  songs  with  which,  after  a  season  of  sharp  absti- 
nence, a  lucky  booty  of  deer's  or  goat's  flesh  would  naturally  be 
ushered  home,  existed,  perhaps,  the  germ  of  the  modern  grace. 
It  is  not  otherwise  easy  to  be  understood,  why  the  blessing  of 
food  —  the  act  of  eating —  should  have  had  a  particular  expres- 

;«)sion  of  thanksgiving  annexed  to  it,  distinct  from  that  implied 
and  silent  gratitude  with  which  we  are  expected  to  enter  upon 
the  enjoyment  of  the  many  other  various  gifts  and  good  things 
of  existence. 


GRACE    BEFORE    MEAT  111 

I  own  that  I  am  disposed  to  say  grace  upon  twenty  other 
occasions  in  the  course  of  the  day  besides  my  dinner.  I  want  a 
form  for  setting  out  upon  a  pleasant  walk,  for  a  moonlight 
ramble,  for  a  friendly  meeting,  or  a  solved  problem.  Why  have 
we  none  for  books,  those  spiritual  repasts  —  a  grace  before  5 
Milton  —  a  grace  before  Shakspeare  —  a  devotional  exercise 
proper  to  be  said  before  reading  the  Fairy  Queen?  —  but,  the 
received  ritual  having  prescribed  these  forms  to  the  solitary 
ceremony  of  manducation,  I  shall  confine  my  observations  to 
the  experience  which  I  have  had  of  the  grace,  properly  so  10 
called  ;  commending  my  new  scheme  for  extension  to  a  niche 
in  the  grand  philosophical,  poetical,  and  perchance  in  part 
heretical,  liturgy,  now  compiling  by  my  friend  Homo  Humanus, 
for  the  use  of  a  certain  snug  congregation  of  Utopian  Rabelsesian 
Christians,  no  matter  where  assembled.  15 

The  form,  then,  of  the  benediction  before  eating  has  its 
beauty  at  a  poor  man's  table,  or  at  the  simple  and  unpro vo- 
cative repast  of  children.  It  is  here  that  the  grace  becomes 
exceedingly  graceful.  The  indigent  man,  who  hardly  knows 
whether  he  shall  have  a  meal  the  next  day  or  not,  sits  down  to  20 
his  fare  with  a  present  sense  of  the  blessing,  which  can  be  but 
feebly  acted  by  the  rich,  into  whose  minds  the  conception  of 
wanting  a  dinner  could  never,  but  by  some  extreme  theory, 
have  entered.  The  proper  end  of  food  —  the  animal  suste- 
nance—  is  barely  contemplated  by  them.  The  poor  man's  25 
bread  is  his  daily  bread,  literally  his  bread  for  the  day. 
Their  courses  are  perennial. 

Again,  the  plainest  diet  seems  the  fittest  to  be  preceded  by 
the  grace.  That  which  is  least  stimulative  to  appetite,  leaves 
the  mind  most  free  for  foreign  considerations.  A  man  may  feel  30 
thankful,  heartily  thankful,  over  a  dish  of  plain  mutton  with 
turnips,  and  have  leisure  to  reflect  upon  the  ordinance  and  in- 
stitution of  eating ;  when  he  shall  confess  a  perturbation  of 
mind,  inconsistent  with  the  purposes  of  the  grace,  at  the 
presence  of  venison  or  turtle.  When  I  have  sate  (a  raru.s  35 
hospes'^)  at  rich  men's  taVjles,  with  the  savoury  soup  and  messes 
steaming  up  the  nostrils,  and  moistening  the  lips  of  the  guests 
with  desire  and  a  distracted  choice,  I  have  felt  the  introduc- 
tion of  that  ceremony  to  be  unseasoiKi])le.     With  the  ravenous 


112  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

orgasm  upon  you,  it  seems  impertinent  to  interpose  a  religious 
.sentiment.  It  is  a  confusion  of  purpose  to  mutter  out  praises 
from  a  moutli  tliat  waters.  The  heats  of  epicurism  put  out  the 
gentle  llame  of   devotion.     The  incense  which  rises  round  is 

.")  pagan,  and  the  belly-god  intercepts  it  for  its  own.  The  very 
e.\cess  of  tlie  provision  beyond  the  needs,  takes  away  all  sense 
of  ])roportion  between  the  end  and  means.  The  giver  is  veiled 
by  his  gifts.  You  are  startled  at  the  injustice  of  returning 
thanks-^  for  what?  —  for   having   too   much    while   so   many 

10  starve.     It  is  to  praise  the  Gods  amiss. 

I  have  observed  this  awkwardness  felt,  scarce  consciously 
l>erhaps,  by  the  good  man  who  says  the  grace.  I  have  seen 
it  in  clergymen  and  others  —  a  sort  of  shame  —  a  sense  of  the 
co-presenVe   of    circumstances   which   unhallow    the    blessing. 

15  Aft«r  a  devotional  tone  put  on  for  a  few  seconds,  how  rapidly 
the  speaker  will  fall  into  his  common  voice,  —  helping  himself 
or  his  neighbour,  as  if  to  get  rid  of  some  uneasy  sensation  of 
hypocrisy.  Xot  that  the  good  man  was  a  hj^ocrite,  or  was  not 
most  conscientious  in  the  discharge  of  the  duty;  but  he  felt  in 

2<)  his  inmost  mind  the  incompatibility  of  the  scene  and  the 
vi;inds  before  him  with  the  exercise  of  a  calm  and  rational 
gratitude. 

I  hear  somebody  exclaim,  —  Would  you  have  Christians  sit 
down  at  table,  like  hogs  to  their  troughs,  without  remembering 

'jr»  the  (Jiver?  —  no  —  I  would  have  them  sit  down  as  Christians, 
remembering  the  Giver,  and  less  like  hogs.  Or,  if  their  appe- 
tites must  run  riot,  and  they  must  pamper  themselves  with 
delicacies  for  which  east  and  west  are  ransacked,  I  would  have 
tln.Mn  postpone  their  benediction  to  a  fitter  season,  when  appe- 

'M  tite  is  laid ;  when  the  still  small  voice  can  be  heard,  and  the 
rea,sou  of  the  grace  returns  —  with  temperate  diet  and  restricted 
dishes.  Gluttony  and  surfeiting  are  no  proper  occasions  for 
thanksgiving.  When  Jeshurun  waxed  fat,  we  read  that  he 
kicked.      Virgil  knew  the  harpy-nature  better,  when  he  put 

35  into  the  mouth  of  Celaeno  anything  but  a  blessing.  We  may 
l>e  gratefully  sensible  of  the  deliciousness  of  some  kinds  of  food 
beyond  othei's,  though  that  is  a  meaner  and  inferior  gratitude: 
but  the  proper  object  of  the  grace  is  sustenance,  not  relishes; 
daily  bread,  not  delicacies ;  the  means  of  life,  and  not  the  means 


GRACE   BEFORE    MEAT  113 

of  pampering  the  carcass.  "With  what  frame  or  composure,  I 
wonder,  can  a  city  chaplain  pronounce  his  benediction  at  some 
great  Hall-feast,  when  he  knows  tliat  his  last  concluding  pious 
word  —  and  that  in  all  probability,  the  sacred  name  which  he 
preaches  —  is  but  the  signal  for  so  many  impatient  harpies  to  5 
commence  their  foul  orgies,  with  as  little  sense  of  true  thankful- 
ness (which  is  temperance)  as  those  Virgilian  fowl !  It  is  well 
if  the  good  man  himself  does  not  feel  his  devotions  a  little 
clouded,  those  foggy  sensuous  steams  mingling  with  and  pol- 
luting the  pure  altar  sacrifice.  10 

The  severest  satire  upon  full  tables  and  surfeits  is  the  banquet 
which  Satan,  in  the  Paradise  Regained,  provides  for  a  tempta- 
tion in  the  wilderness  :  — 

A  table  richly  spread  in  regal  mode, 

With  dishes  piled,  and  meats  of  noblest  sort  15 

And  savour:  beasts  of  chase,  or  fowl  of  game> 

In  pastry  built,  or  from  the  spit,  or  boiled, 

Gris-amber-steamed  ;  all  fish  from  sea  or  shore, 

Freshet  or  purling  brook,  for  which  was  drained 

Pontus,  and  Lucriue  bay,  and  Afric  coast.  20 

The  Tempter,  I  warrant  you,  thought  these  cates  would  go 
down  without  the  recommendatory  preface  of  a  benediction. 
They  are  like  to  be  short  graces  where  the  devil  plays  the  host. 
—  I  am  afraid  the  poet  wants  his  usual  decorum  in  this  place. 
Was  he  thinking  of  the  old  Roman  luxury,  or  of  a  gaudy-day  25 
at  Cambridge  ?  This  was  a  temptation  fitter  for  a  Heliogabalus."^ 
The  whole  l)anquet  is  too  civic  and  cidinary,  and  the  accompa- 
niments altogether  a  profanation  of  that  deep,  abstracted,  holy 
scene.  The  mighty  artillery  of  sauces,  which  the  cook-fiend 
conjures  up,  is  out  of  proportion  to  the  simple  wants  and  plain  30 
hunger  of  the  guest.  He  that  disturbed  him  in  his  dreams, 
from  his  dreams  might  have  been  taught  better.  To  the  tem- 
perate fantasies^  of  the  famished  Son  of  God,  what  sorb  of 
feasts  presented  themselves?  —  He  dreamed  indeed, 

As  appetite  is  wont  to  dream,  35 

Of  meats  and  drinks,  nature's  refreshnient  sweet. 

I 


114  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

But  what  meats?  — 

Him  thouuht  he  by  the  brook  of  Cherith  stood, 
And  -saw  the  ravens  with  their  horuy  beaks 
Food  to  Elijah  bringing-,  even  and  morn  ; 
5        Tiiongh  ravenons,  taught  to  abstain  from  what  they  brought : 
He  saw  the  prophet  also  how  he  fled 
Into  the  desert,  and  how  there  he  slept 
Under  a  juniper;  then  how  awaked 
He  found  his  supper  on  the  coals  prepared, 
10         And  by  the  angel  was  bid  rise  and  eat. 
And  ate  the  second  time  after  repose, 
The  strength  whereof  sufficed  him  forty  days: 
Sometimes,  that  with  Elijah  he  partook, 
Or  as  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse. 

lo  Xotliiug  in  ^niton  is  finelier  fancied  than  these  temperate 
dreams  of  the  divine  Hnngerer.  To  which  of  these  two  vision- 
ary banquets,  think  you,  would  the  introduction  of  what  is 
called  the  grace  have  been  most  fitting  and  pertinent  ? 

Theoretically  I  am  no  enemy  to  graces ;  but  practically  I  own 

-'0  that  (before  meat  especially)  they  seem  to  involve  something 
awkward  and  unseasonable.  Our  appetites,  of  one  or  another 
kind,  are  excellent  spurs  to  our  reason,  which  might  otherwise 
l)ut  feebly  set  about  the  great  ends  of  preserving  and  continu- 
ing the  species.     They  are  fit  blessings  to  be  contemplated  at  a 

_'.")  distance  with  a  becoming  gratitude  ;  but  the  moment  of  appe- 
tite (the  judicious  reader  will  apprehend  me)  is,  perhaps,  the 
least  fit  season  for  that  exercise.  Tlie  Quakers,  w^ho  go  about 
their  business,  of  every  description,  with  more  calmness  than 
we,  have  more  title  to  the  use  of  these  benedictory  prefaces.     I 

;(i  have  always  admired  their  silent  grace,  and  the  more  because  I 
have  observed  their  applications  to  the  meat  and  drink  follow- 
ing to  be  less  passionate  and  sensual  than  ours.  They  are 
neither  gluttons  nor  wine-bibbers  as  a  people.  They  eat,  as  a 
horse  bolts  his  chopped  hay,  with  indifference,  calmness,  and 

■'.5  cleanly  circumstances.  They  neither  grease  nor  slop  them- 
selves. AVhen  I  see  a  citizen  in  his  bib  and  tucker,  I  cannot 
imagine  it  a  surplice. 

I  am  no  (Quaker  at  my  food.     I  confess  I  am  not  indifferent 
to  the  kinds  of  it.     Those  unctuous  morsels  of  deer's  flesli  were 


GRACE    BEFORE    MEAT  115 

not  made  to  be  received  with  dispassionate  services.  I  hate  a 
man  who  swallows  it,  affecting  not  to  know  what  he  is  eating. 
I  suspect  his  taste  in  higher  matters.  I  shrink  instinctively 
from  one  who  professes  to  like  minced  veal.  There  is  a  physi- 
ognomical character  in  the  tastes  for  food.    C holds  that  as 

man  cannot  have  a  pure  mind  who  refuses  apple-dumplings. 
I  am  not  certain  but. he  is  right.  With  the  decay  of  my  first 
innocence,  I  confess  a  less  and  less  relish  daily  for  those  innoc- 
uous cates.  The  whole  vegetable  tribe  have  lost  their  gust 
with  me.  Only  I  stick  to  asparagus,  which  still  seems  to  in-  lO 
spire  gentle  thoughts.  I  am  impatient  and  querulous  under 
culinary  disappointments,  as  to  come  home  at  the  dinner  hour, 
for  instance,  expecting  some  savoury  mess,  and  to  find  one  quite 
tasteless  and  sapidless.  Butter  ill  melted —  that  commonest  of 
kitchen  failures  —  puts  me  beside  my  tenor.  —  The  author"  of  15 
the  Rambler  used  to  make  inarticulate  animal  noises  over  a 
favourite  food.  Was  this  the  music  quite  proper  to  be  preceded 
by  the  grace  ?  or  would  the  pious  man  have  done  better  to  post- 
pone his  devotions  to  a  season  when  the  blessing  might  be  con- 
templated with  less  perturbation?  I  quarrel  with  no  m.an's20 
tastes,  nor  would  set  my  thin  face  against  those  excellent 
things,  in  their  way,  jollity  and  feasting.  But  as  these  exer- 
cises, however  laudable,  have  little  in  them  of  grace  or  grace- 
fulness, a  man  should  be  sure,  before  he  ventures  so  to  grace 
them,  that  while  he  is  pretending  his  devotions  otherwhere,  he  25 
is  not  secretly  kissing  his  hand  to  some  great  fi.sh  —  his  Dagon° 
—  with  a  special  consecration  of  no  ark  but  the  fat  tureen  be- 
fore him.  Graces  are  the  sweet  preluding  strains  to  the  ban- 
(piets  of  angels  and  children ;  to  the  roots  and  severer  repasts 
of  the  Chartreuse;  to  the  slender,  but  not  slenderly  acknow-30 
ledged,  refection  of  the  poor  and  humble  man  :  but  at  the 
heaped-up  boards  of  the  pampered  and  the  luxurious  they  be- 
come of  dissonant  mood,  less  timed  and  tuned  to  the  occasion, 
methinks,  than  the  noise  of  those  better  befitting  organs  would 
be  which  children  hear  tales  of,  at  Hog's  Norton."  We  sit  too  35 
long  at  our  meals,  or  are  too  curious  in  the  study  of  them,  or 
too  disordered  in  our  a])plication  to  them,  or  engross  too  great 
a  portion  of  those  good  things  (which  should  be  common)  to 
our  share,  to  be  able  with  any  grace  to  say  grace.    To  be  thank- 


116  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

fill  for  what  we  grasp  exceeding  our  proportion,  is  to  add  hypoc- 
risy to  injustice"  A  lurking  sense  of  this  truth  is  what  makes 
the  performance  of  this  duty  so  cold  and  spiritless  a  service  at 
most  tables.  In  houses  where  the  grace  is  as  indispensable  as 
5  the  napkin,  who  has  not  seen  that  never-settled  question  arise, 
as  to  who  shall  say  it ;  while  the  good  man  of  the  house  and  the 
visitor  clergyman,  or  some  other  guest  belike  of  next  authority, 
from  years  or  gravity,  shall  be  bandying  about  the  ofl&ce  be- 
tween them   as   a   matter  of   compliment,  each  of   them  not 

10  unwilling  to  shift  the  awkward  burthen  of  an  equivocal  duty 
from  his  own  shoulders  ? 

I  once  drank  tea  in  company  with  two  Methodist  divines  of 
different  persuasions,  whom  it  was  my  fortune  to  introduce  to 
each  other  for  the  first  time  that  evening.    Before  the  first  cup 

1.5  was  handed  round,  one  of  these  reverend  gentlemen  put  it  to 
the  other  with  all  due  solemnity,  whether  he  chose  to  say  any- 
thing. It  seems  it  is  the  custom  with  some  sectaries  to  put  up 
a  short  prayer  before  this  meal  also.  His  reverend  brother  did 
not  at  first  quite  apprehend  him,  but  upon  an  explanation,  with 

20  little  less  importance  he  made  answer,  that  it  was  not  a  custom 
known  in  his  church :  in  which  courteous  evasion  the  other 
acquiescing  for  good  manners'  sake,  or  in  compliance  with  a 
weak  brother,  the  supplementary  or  tea  grace  was  w\aived  alto- 
gether.   With  what  spirit  might  not  Lucian°  have  painted  two 

25  priests,  of  his  religion,  playing  into  each  other's  hands  the  com- 
pliment of  performing  or  omitting  a  sacrifice, — the  hungry 
God  ineantime,  doubtful  of  his  incense,  with  expectant  nostrifs 
hovering  over  the  two  flamens,  and  (as  between  two  stoolsj 
going  away  in  the  end  without  his  supper. 

30  A  short  form  upon  these  occasions  is  felt  to  want  reverence  ; 
a  long  one,  I  am  afraid,  cannot  escape  the  charge  of  imperti- 
nence. I  do  not  quite  approve  of  the  epigrammatic  conciseness 
with  which  that  equivocal  wag  (but  my  pleasant  schoolfellow) 
C.  V.  L.,  when  importuned  for  a  grace,  used  to  inquire,  first 

35  slyly  leering  down  the  table,  "  Is  there  no  clergvman  here  ?  "— 
significantly  adding,  "  Thank  G— ."  Nor  do  I  think  our  old 
form  at  school  quite  pertinent,  where  w-e  were  used  to  preface 
our  bald  bread-and-cheese-suppers  with  a  preamble,  connecting 
with  that  humble  blessing  a  recognition  of  benefits  the  most 


3IY   FIRST   PLAY  117 

awful  and  overwhelming  to  the  imagination  which  religion  has 
to  offer.  Non  tunc  illis  erat  locus.°  I  remember  we  were  put  to 
it  to  reconcile  the  phrase  "  good  creatures,"  upon  which  the 
blessing  rested,  with  the  fare  set  before  us,  wilfully  under- 
standing that  expression  in  a  low  and  animal  sense,  — till  some  5 
one  recalled  a  legend,  which  told  how,  in  the  golden  days  of 
Christ's,  the  young  Hospitallers  were  wont  to  have  smoking 
joints  of  roast  meat  upon  their  nightly  boards,  till  some  pious 
benefactor,  commiserating  the  decencies,  rather  than  the  pal- 
ates, of  the  children,  commuted  our  flesh  for  garments,  and  10 
gave  us  —  horresco  referens° — trousers  instead  of  mutton. 


MY   FIRST   PLAY 

At  the  north  end  of  Cross-court  there  yet  stands  a  portal,  of 
some  architectural  pretensions,  though  reduced  to  humble  use, 
serving  at  present  for  an  entrance  to  a  printing-office.  This 
old  doorway,  if  you  are  young.  Reader,  you  may  not  know  was  15 
the  identical  pit  entrance  to  old  Drury  —  Garrick's°  Drury  —  all 
of  it  that  is  left.  I  never  pass  it  without  shaking  some  forty 
years  from  off  my  shoulders,  recurring  to  the  evening  when  I 
passed  through  it  to  see  my  first  play.  The  afternoon  had  been 
w^et.  and  the  condition  of  our  going  (the  elder  folks  and  myself)  20 
was,  that  the  rain  should  cease.  With  what  a  beating  heart 
xlid  I  watch  from  the  window  the  puddles,  from  the  stillness  of 
which  I  was  taught  to  prognosticate  the  desired  cessation  !  I 
seem  to  remember  the  last  spurt,  and  the  glee  with  which  I  ran 
to  announce  it.  25 

"We  went  with  orders,  which  my  godfather  F.  had  sent  us. 
He  kept  the  oil  shop  (now  Davies's)  at  the  corner  of  Feather- 
stone-building,  in  Holborn.  F.  was  a  tall  grave  person,  lofty 
in  speech,  and  had  pretensions  above  his  rank.  He  associated 
in  those  days  with  John  Palmer,  the  comedian,  whose  gait  and  30 
bearing  he  seemed  to  copy ;  if  John  (which  is  quite  as  likely) 
did  not  rather  borrow  somewhat  of  his  manner  from  my  god- 
father.    He  was  also  known  to,  and  visited  by,  Sheridali.     It 


118  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

was  to  his  house  in  Holborn  that  young  Brinsley  brought  his 
first  wife  on  her  elopement  with  him  from  a  boarding-school  at 
Bath  — the  beautiful  Maria  Linley.  My  parents  were  present 
(over  a  quadrille  table)  when  he  "arrived  in  the  evening  with 
5  his  harmonious  charge.  —  From  either  of  these  connections  it 
may  be  inferred  that  my  godfather  could  command  an  order 
for"  the  then  Drury-laue"^  theatre  at  pleasure  —  and,  indeed,  a 
]iretty  liberal  issue  of  those  cheap  billets,  in  Brinsley's  easy 
autograph,  I  have  heard   him  say  was  the  sole  remuneration 

10  whicli  he  had  received  for  many  years'  nightly  illumination  of 
the  orchestra  and  various  avenues  of  that  theatre  —  and  he  was 
content  it  should  be  so.  The  honour  of  Sheridan's  familiarity 
—  or  supposed  familiarity  —  was  better  to  my  godfather  than 
money. 

15  F.  was  the  most  gentlemanly  of  oilmen ;  grandiloquent,  yet 
courteous.  His  delivery  of  the  commonest  matters  of  fact  was 
Ciceronian,  He  had  two  Latin  words  almost  constantly  in  his 
mouth  (how  odd  sounds  Latin  from  an  oilman's  lips !),  which 
my  better  knowledge  since  has  enabled  me  to  correct.    In  strict 

20  pronunciation  they  should  have  been  sounded  vice  versa  —  but 
in  those  young  years  they  impressed  me  with  more  awe  than 
they  would  now  do,  read  aright  from  Seneca°  or  Yarro^  —  in  his 
own  peculiar  pronunciation,  monosyllabically  elaborated,  or 
Anglicized,  into  something  like  verae  verse.     By  an  imposing 

25  manner,  and  the  help  of  these  distorted  syllables,  he  climbed 
(Init  that  was  little)  to  the  highest  parochial  honours  which 
St.  Andrew's  has  to  bestow. 

He  is  dead  —  and  thus  much  I  thought  due  to  his  memory,, 
both  for  my  first  orders  (little  wondrous  talismans" !  —  slight 

30  keys,  and  insignificant  to  outward  sight,  but  opening  to  me 
more  than  Arabian  paradises  !)  and,  moreover,  that  by  his  testa- 
mentary beneficence  I  came  into  possession  of  the  only  landed 
jnoperty  which  I  could  ever  call  my  own  —  situate  near  the 
road-way   village   of    pleasant    Puckeridge,    in    Hertfordshire. 

35  When  I  journeyed  down  to  take  possession,  and  planted  foot 
on  my  own  ground,  the  stately  habits  of  the  donor  descended 
upon  me,  and  I  strode  (shall  l"^confess  the  vanity?)  with  larger 
paces  over  my  allotment  of  three  quarters  of  an  acre,  withits 
commodious  mansion  in  the  midst,  with  the  feeling  of  an  Eng- 


MY    FIRST    PLAY  119 

lish  freeholder  that  all  betwixt  sky  and  centre  was  my  own. 
The  estate  has  passed  into  more  prudent  hands,  and  nothing 
but  an  agrarian  can  restore  it. 

In  those  days  were  pit  orders.  Beshrew  the  uncomfortable 
manager  who  abolished  them !  —  with  one  of  these  we  went.  I  5 
remember  the  waiting  at  the  door  —  not  that  which  is  left  — 
but  between  that  and  an  inner  door  in  shelter  —  O  when  shall 
I  be  such  an  expectant  again  !  —  with  the  cry  of  nonpareils,^  an 
indispensable  play-house  accompaniment  in  those  days.  As 
near  as  I  can  recollect,  the  fashionable  pronunciation  of  the  10 
theatrical  fruiteresses  then  was,  "  Chase  some  oranges,  chase 
some  numparels,  chase  a  bill  of  the  play;  "  —  chase  pj-o  chuse. 
But  when  we  got  in,  and  I  beheld  the  green  curtain  that  veiled 
a  heaven  to  my  imagination,  which  was  soon  to  be  disclosed  — 
the  breathless  anticipations  I  endured !  I  had  seen  something  15 
like  it  in  the  plate  prefixed  to  Troilus  and  Cressida.  in  Rowe's 
Shakspeare . —  the  tent  scene  with  Diomede  —  and  a  sight  of  that 
plate  can  ahvays  bring  back  in  a  measure  the  feeling  of  that 
evening.  —  The  boxes  at  that  time,  full  of  well-dressed  women 
of  quality,  projected  over  the  pit;  and  the  pilasters  reaching  20 
down  w^ere  adorned  with  a  glistering  substance  (I  know  not 
what)  under  glass  (as  it  seemed),  resembling  —  a  homely  fancy 
—  but  I  judged  it  to  be  sugar-candy  —  yet  to  my  raised  imagina- 
tion, divested  of  its  homelier  qualities,  it  appeared  a  glorified 
candy!  —  The  orchestra  lights  at  length  arose,  those  "fair 25 
Auroras !  "  Once  the  bell  sounded.  It  was  to  ring  out  yet  once 
again  —  and,  incapable  of  the  anticipation,  I  reposed  my  shut 
eyes  in  a  sort  of  resignation  upon  the  maternal  lap.  It  rang 
tile  second  time.  The  curtain  drew  up  —  I  was  not  past  six 
years  old  and  the  play  was  Artaxerxes° !  30 

I  had  dabbled  a  little  in  the  Universal  History  —  the  ancient 
part  of  it  —  and  here  was  the  court  of  Persia.  —  It  was  being 
admitted  to  a  sight  of  the  past.  I  took  no  proper  interest  in 
the  action  going  on,  for  I  understood  not  its  import  —  but  I  heard 
the  word  Darius,  and  I  was  in  the  midst  of  Daniel.  All  feeling  35 
was  absorbed  in  vision.  Gorgeous  vests,  gardens,  palaces, 
2)rincesses,  passed  before  me.  I  knew  not  players.  I  was  in 
Persepolis  for  the  time  ;  and  the  burning  idol  of  their  devotion 
almost  converted  me  into  a  w^orshipper.     I  was  awe-struck,  and 


120  THE   ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 

Ix'li.'v.'d  those  significations  to  be  something  more  than  ele- 
mental fires.  It  was  all  enchantment  and  a  dream.  No  such 
]>lea>^ure  has  since  visited  me  but  in  dreams.  —  Harlequin's 
Invasion  followed;  where,  I  remember,  the  transformation  of 
5  the  magistrates  into  reverend  beldams  seemed  to  me  a  piece  of 
grave  historic  justice,  and  the  tailor  carrying  his  own  head  to 
be  as  sober  a  verity  as  the  legend  of  St.  Denys.° 

The  next  play  to  which  I  was  taken  was  the  Lady  of  the 
Manor,  of  which,  with   the  exception  of   some  scenery,  very 

10  faint  traces  are  left  in  my  memory.  It  was  followed  by  a 
pantomime,  called  Lun's  Ghost — a  satiric  touch,  I  apprehend, 
upon  Rich,  not  long  since  dead  —  but  to  my  apprehension  (too 
sincere  for  satire),  Lun  was  as  remote  a  piece  of  antiquity  as 
Lud'^ — the  father  of  a  line  of  Harleqnins  —  transmitting  his 

15  dagger  of  lath^  (the  wooden  sceptre)  through  countless  ages. 
I  saw  the  primeval  ^lotley  come  from  his  silent  tomb  in  a 
ghastly  vest  of  white  patchwork,  like  the  apparition  of  a  dead 
rainliow.  So  Harlequins  (thought  I)  look  when  they  are 
dead. 

20  My  third  play  followed  in  quick  succession.  It  was  the  Way 
of  the  World.°  I  think  I  must  have  sat  at  it  as  grave  as  a 
judge:  for,  I  remember,  the  hysteric  affectations  of  good  Lady 
Wishfort  affected  me  like  some  solemn  tragic  passion.  Robin- 
son Crusoe  followed ;  in  which  Crusoe,  man  Friday,  and  the  parrot, 

2')  were  as  good  and  authentic  as  in  the  story.  —  The  clownery  and 
pantaloonerv  of  these  pantomimes  have  clean  passed  out  of  my 
head.  I  believe,  I  no  more  laughed  at  them,  than  at  the  same 
age  I  should  have  been  disposed  to  laugh  at  the  grotesque 
Gothic  heads  (seeming  to  me  then  replete  with  devout  mean- 

>>  iug)  that  gape,  and  grin,  in  stone  around  the  inside  of  the  old 
Round  Church  (my  church)  of  the  Templars. 

I  saw  these  plays  in  the  season  1781-2.  when  I  was  from  six 
to  seven  years  old.  After  the  intervention  of  six  or  seven  other 
years   (for   at  school    all   play-going   was   inhibited)    I    again 

r,  ent-ered  the  doors  of  a  theatre.  That  old  Artaxerxes  evening 
had  never  done  ringing  in  my  fancy.  I  expected  the  same 
feelings  to  come  again  with  the  same  occasion.  But  we  differ 
from  ourselves  less  at  sixty  and  sixteen,  than  the  latter  does 
from  six.     In  that  interval  what  had  I  not  lost!     At  the  first 


DREAM-CHILDREN :    A    REVERIE  121 

period    I   knew    nothing,   understood    nothing,    discriminated 
nothing.     I  felt  all,  loved  all,  wondered  all  — 

Was  nourished,  I  could  not  tell  how  — 

I  had  left  the  temple  a  devotee,  and  w^as  returned  a  rationalist. 
The  same  things  were  there  materially  ;  but  the  emblem,  the  5 
reference,  w'as  gone  !  —  The  green  curtain  was  no  longer  a  veil, 
drawn  between  two  w^orlds,  the   unfolding  of   wdiich  was   to 
bring   back  past    ages,  to   present   a   "royal   ghost,"  —  but   a 
certain   quantity   of   green  baize,  w^hich  was  to  separate   the 
audience  for   a  given  time  from  certain  of    their  fellow-men  10 
who  were  to  come   forM'ard   and   pretend   those   parts.      The 
lights  —  the  orchestra  lights  —  came  uj:   a  clumsy  machinery. 
The  first  ring,  and  the  second  ring,  w^as  now  but  a  trick  of  the 
prompter's  bell  —  which  had  been,  like  the  note  of  the  cuckoo, 
a  phantom  of  a  voice,  no  hand  seen  or  guessed  at  which  min- 15 
istered  to   its  warning.     The   actors    were    men   and   women 
painted.     I  thought  the  fault  was  in  them  ;  but  it  was  in  myself, 
and  the  alteration  which  those  many  centuries  —  of  six  short 
twelvemonths  —  had  wrought  in  me.  —  Perhaps  it  was  fortunate 
for  me  that  the  j^lay  of  the  evening  was  but  an  indifferent  20 
comedy,  as  it  gave  me  time  to  crop  some  unreasonable  expecta- 
tions, which  might  have  interfered  with  the  genuine  emotions 
with  which  I  was  soon  after  enabled  to  enter  upon  the  first 
appearance  to  me  of  Mrs.   Siddons°  in  Isabella.     Comparison 
and  retrospection  soon  jdelded  to  the  present  attraction  of  the  25 
scene  ;  and  the  theatre  became  to  me,  upon  a  new  stock,  the 
most  deligiitful  of  recreations. 


DREAM-CHILDREN:    A   REVERIE 

CiiiLDRKX  love  to  listen  to  stories  about  their  elders,  when 
the;!  were  children ;  to  stretch  their  imagination  to  the  concep- 
tion of  a  traditionary  great-uncle,  or  grandame,  whom  they  never  30 
saw.     It  was  in  this  spirit  that  my  little  ones  crept  about  me 


]1.'2  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

tl»e  otlier  evening  to  hear  about  their  great-grandmother  Field, 
who  Hved  in  a  great  house  in  Xorfolk  (a  hundred  times  bigger 
than  tliat  in  Avhich  they  and  papa  lived)  which  had  been  the 
scene  —  so  at  least  it  was  generally  believed  in  that  part  of  the 
5  country  —  of  the  tragic  incidents  which  they  had  lately  become 
familiar  with  from  "the  ballad  of  the  Children  in  the  Wood. 
Certain  it  is  that  the  whole  story  of  the  children  and  their  cruel 
uncle  was  to  be  seen  fairly  carved  out  in  wood  upon  the  chimney- 
piece  of  the  great  hall,  the  whole  story  down  to  the  Robin  Red- 

10  l.reasts ;  till  a  foolish  rich  person  pulled  it  down  to  set  up  a 
i.;iarl)le  one  of  modern  invention  in  its  stead,  with  no  story  upon 
it.  Here  Alice  put  out  one  of  her  dear  mother's  looks,  too  ten- 
der to  be  called  upbraiding.  Then  I  went  on  to  say,  how  reli- 
gious and  how  good  their  great-grandmother  Field  was,  how 

l.j  beloved  and  respected  by  everybody,  though  she  was  not  indeed 
the  mistress  of  this  great  house,  but  had  only  the  charge  of  it 
(and  yet  in  some  respects  she  might  be  said  to  be  the  mistress 
of  it  too)  committed  to  her  by  the  owner,  who  preferred  living 
in  a  newer  and  more  fashionable  mansion  which  he  had  pur- 

20  chased  somewhere  in  the  adjoining  county ;  but  still  she  lived 
in  it  in  a  manner  as  if  it  had  been  her  own,  and  kept  up  the 
dignity  of  the  great  house  in  a  sort  while  she  lived,  which  after- 
wards came  to  decay,  and  was  nearly  pulled  down,  and  all  its 
old  ornaments  stripped  and  carried  away  to  the  owner's  other 

2o  house,  where  they  were  set  up,  and  looked  as  awkward  as  if 
some  one  were  to  carry  away  the  old  tombs  they  had  seen  lately 
at  the  Abbey,  and  stick  them  up  in  Lady  C.'s  tawdry  gilt  drawl- 
ing-room. Here  John  smiled,  as  much  as  to  say,  "that  would 
I "6  foolish  indeed."     And  then  I  told    how,  when  she  canie  to 

30  die,  her  fimeral  was  attended  by  a  concourse  of  all  the  poor, 
and  some  of  the  gentry  too,  of  the  neighbourhood  for  many 
miles  round,  to  show  their  respect  for  her  memory,  because  she 
had  been  such  a  good  and  religious  woman ;  so  good  indeed  that 
slie  knew  all  the  Psaltery  by  heart,  ay,  and  a  great  part  of  the 

•'<  Testament  besides.  Here  little  Alice  spread  her  hands.  Then 
T  told  what  a  tall,  upright,  graceful  person  their  great-grand- 
mother Field  once  was;  and  how  in  her  youth  she  was  esteemed 
the  best  dancer  —  here  Alice's  little  right  foot  played  an  in- 
voluntary movement,  till,  upon  my  looking  grave,  it  desisted 


DREAM-CHILDREN ;    A    REVERIE  123 

—  the  best  dancer,  I  was  saying,  in  the  county,  till  a  cruel  dis- 
ease, called  a  cancer,  came,  and  bowed  her  down  with  pain ;  but 
it  could  never  bend  her  good  spirits,  or  make  them  stoop,  but 
they  were  still  upright,  because  she  was  so  good  and  religious. 
Then  I  told  how  she  was  used  to  sleep  by  herself  in  a  lone  5 
chamber  of  the  great  lone  house;  and  how  she  believed  that  an 
apparition  of  two  infants  was  to  be  seen  at  midnight  gliding 
up  and  down  the  great  staircase  near  where  she  slept,  but  she 
said  "  those  innocents  would  do  her  no  harm ; "  and  how 
frightened  I  used  to  be,  though  in  those  days  I  had  my  maid  IC 
to  sleep  with  me,  because  I  was  never  half  so  good  or  religious 
as  she  —  and  yet  I  never  saw  the  infants.  Here  John  expanded 
all  his  eyebrows  and  tried  to  look  courageous.  Then  I  told  how 
good  she  was  to  all  her  grandchildren,  having  us  to  the  great 
liouse°  in  the  holy -days,  where  I  in  particular  iised  to  spend  15 
many  hoars  by  myself,  in  gazing  upon  the  old  busts  of  the 
Twelve  CfEsars,  that  had  been  Emperors  of  Kome,  till  the  old 
marble  heads  would  seem  to  live  again,  or  I  to  be  turned  into 
marble  with  them ;  how  I  never  could  be  tired  with  roaming 
about  that  huge  mansion,  with  its  vast  empty  rooms,  with  their  20 
worn-out  hangings,  fluttering  tapestry,  and  carved  oaken  panels, 
with  the  gilding  almost  rubbed  out —  sometimes  in  the  spacious 
old-fashioned  gardens,  which  I  had  almost  to  myself,  unless  when 
now  and  then  a  solitary  gardening  man  would  cross  me — and 
how  the  nectarines  and  j^eaches  hung  upon  the  walls,  without  25 
my  ever  offering  to  pluck  them,  because  they  were  forbidden 
fruit,  unless  now  and  then,  —  and  because  I  had  more  pleasure 
in  strolling  about  among  the  old  melancholy-looking  yew-trees, 
or  the  firs,  and  picking  up  the  red  berries,  and  the  fir-apples, 
which  were  good  for  nothing  but  to  look  at  —  or  in  lying  about  30 
upon  the  fresh  grass,  with  all  the  fine  garden  smells  around  me 

—  or  basking  in  the  orangery,  till  I  could  almost  fancy  myself 
ripening  too  along  with  the  oranges  and  the  limes  in  that  grate- 
ful warmth  —  or  in  watching  the  dace  that  darted  to  and  fro  in 
the  fishpond,  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  with  here  and  there  35 
a  great  sulky  pike  hanging  midway  down  the  water  in  silent 
state,  as  if  it  mocked  at  their  impertinent  friskings,  —  I  had 
more  ])leasure  in  these  busy-idle  diversions  than  in  all  the  sweet 
flavours  of  peaches,  nectarines,  oranges,  and  such-like  common 


124  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

baits  of  children.  Here  John  slyly  deposited  back  upon  the  plate 
a  bunch  of  grapes,  which,  not  unobserved  by  Alice,  he  had 
meditated  dividing  with  her,  and  both  seemed  willing  to 
relinquish  them  for  the  present  as  irrelevant.  Then,  in  some- 
5  what  a  more  heightened  tone,  I  told  how,  though  their  great- 
graudniother  Field  loved  all  her  grandchildren,  yet  in  an 
especial  manner  she  might  be  said   to  love  their  uncle,  John 

L ,  because  he  was  so  handsome  and  spirited  a  youth,  and 

a  king  to  the  rest  of  us ;  and,  instead  of  moping  about  in  soli- 

10  tary  corners,  like  some  of  us,  he  would  mount  the  most  mettle- 
some horse  he  could  get,  when  but  an  imp  no  bigger  than 
themselves,  and  make  it  carry  him  half  over  the  county  in  a 
morning,  and  join  the  hunters  when  there  were  any  out  —  and 
yet  he  loved  the  old  great  house  and  gardens  too,  but  had  too 

15  much  spii-it  to  be  always  pent  up  within  their  boundaries  —  and 
how  their  uncle  grew  up  to  man's  estate  as  brave  as  he  was 
handsome,  to  the  admiration  of  everybody,  but  of  their  great- 
grandmother  Field  most  especially ;  and  how  he  used  to  carry 
me  upon  his  back  when  I  was  a  lame-footed  boy  —  for  he  was  a 

20  good  bit  older  than  me  —  many  a  mile  w^hen  I  could  not  walk 
for  pain ;  —  and  how  in  after  life  he  became  lame-footed  too, 
and  I  did  not  always  (I  fear)  make  allowances  enough  for  him 
when  he  was  impatient  and  in  j)ain,  nor  remember  sufficiently 
how  considerate  he  had  been  to  me  when  I  was  lame-footed ; 

25  and  how  when  he  died,  though  he  had  not  been  dead  an  hour, 
it  seemed  as  if  he  had  died  a  great  while  ago,  such  a  distance 
there  is  betwixt  life  and  death ;  and  how  I  bore  his  death  as  I 
thought  pretty  well  at  first,  but  afterwards  it  haunted  and 
haunted  me;  and  though  I  did  not  cry  or  take  it  to  heart  as 

30  some  do,  and  as  I  think  he  would  have  done  if  I  had  died,  yet 
I  missed  him  all  day  long,  and  knew  not  till  then  how  much  I 
had  loved  him.  I  missed  his  kindness,  and  I  missed  his  cross- 
ness, and  wished  him  to  be  alive  again,  to  be  quarrelling  with 
him  (for  we  quarrelled  sometimes),  rather  than  not  have  him 

35  again,  and  was  as  uneasy  without  him,  as  he,  their  poor  uncle, 
must  have  been  when  the  doctor  took  off  his  limb.  Here  the 
children  fell  a  crying,  and  asked  if  their  little  mourning  which 
they  had  on  was  not  for  uncle  John,  and  they  looked  up,  and 
prayed  me  not  to  go  on  about  their  uncle,  but  to  tell  them  some 


DISTANT    CORRESPONDENTS  125 

stories  about  their  pretty  dead  mother.  Then  I  told  how  for 
seven  long  years,  in  hope  sometimes,  sometimes  in  despair,  yet 
persisting  ever,  1  courted  the  fair  Alice  W — n°;  and,  as  much 
as  children  could  understand,  I  explained  to  them  what  coyness, 
and  difficulty,  and  denial,  meant  in  maidens  —  when  suddenly  5 
turning  to  Alice,  the  soul  of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  at  her 
eyes  with  such  a  reality  of  re-presentment,  that  I  became  in 
doubt  which  of  them  stood  tliere  before  me,  or  whose  that 
bright  hair  was ;  and  while  I  stood  gazing,  both  the  children 
gradually  gTew  fainter  to  my  view,  receding,  and  still  receding,  10 
till  nothing  at  last  but  two  mournful  features  were  seen  in  the 
uttermost  distance,  which,  without  speech,  strangely  impressed 
upon  me  the  effects  of  speech  :  "  We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor  of  thee, 
nor  are  we  children  at  all.  The  children  of  Alice  call  Bartrum 
father.  We  are  nothing  ;  less  than  nothing,  and  dreams.  We  15 
are  only  what  might  have  been,  and  must  wait  upon  the  tedious 
shores  of  Lethe°  millions  of  ages  before  we  have  existence,  and 

a  name  " and  immediately  awaking,  I  found  myself  quietly 

seated  in  my  bachelor  arm-chair,  where  I  had  fallen  asleep,  with 
the   faithful   Bridget  unchanged  by  my  side  — but   John  L.  20 
(or  James  Elia)  was  gone  for  ever. 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS 

IN   A    LETTF:R    to    B.    F.    ESQ.,    AT    SYDNEY,    NEW    SOUTH    WALES 

P  My  DEAR  F.° — When  I  think  how  welcome  the  sight  of  a 
letter  from  the  world  where  you  were  born  must  be  to  you  in 
that  strange  one  to  which  you  have  been  transplanted,  I  feel 
some  compunctious  visitings  at  my  long  silence.  But,  indeed,  25 
it  is  no  easy  effort  to  set  about  a  correspondence  at  our  distance. 
The  weary' world  of  waters  between  us  oppresses  the  imagina- 
tion. It  'is  difficult  to  conceive  how  a  scrawl  of  mine  should 
ever  stretch  across  it.  It  is  a  sort  of  presumption  to  expect 
that  one's  thoughts  shouhi  live  so  far.     It  is  like  writing  for  30 

I     posterity;  and  reminds  nie  of  one  of  Mrs.   Ruwe's  superscrip- 


lL'(i  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

tioiis,  "  Alcander  to  Strephon  iu  the  shades."  Cowley's  Post- 
Aiigel  is  no  more  than  would  be  expedient  in  such  an  intercourse. 
One  drops  a  packet  at  Lombard-street,  and  in  twenty-fonr  hours 
a  friend  in  Cumberland  gets  it  as  fresh  as  if  it  came  in  ice.  It 
5  is  only  like  whispering  through  a  long  trumpet.  But  suppose  a 
tube  let  down  from  the  moon,  with  yourself  at  one  end  and  the 
vKin  at  the  other ;  it  would  be  some  balk  to  the  spirit  of  con- 
versation, if  you  knew  that  the  dialogue  exchanged  with  that 
interesting  theosophist  would  take  two  or  three  revolutions  of 

10  a  higher  luminary  in  its  passage.  Yet  for  aught  I  know,  you 
may  be  some  parasangs  nigher  that  primitive  idea  —  Plato's 
man — than  we  in  England  here  have  the  honour  to  reckon 
ourselves. 

E]tistolary  matter   usually  compriseth    three  topics;    news, 

1")  sentiment,  and  puns.  In  the  latter,  I  include  all  non-serious 
subjects ;  or  subjects  serious  in  themselves,  but  treated  after 
my  fashion,  non-seriously. —  And  first,  for  news.  In  them  the 
most  desirable  circumstance,  I  suppose,  is  that  they  shall  be 
true.     But  what  security  can  I  have  that  what  I  now  send  you 

20  for  truth  shall  not,  before  you  get  it,  unaccountably  turn  into  a 
lie?  For  instance,  our  mutual  friend  P.  is  at  this  present 
writing  —  my  Now  —  in  good  health,  and  enjoys  a  fair  share  of 
worldly  reputation.  You  are  glad  to  hear  it.  This  is  natural 
and  friendly.     But  at   this   present  reading  —  your  Now  —  he 

2.")  may  jiossibly  be  in  the  Bench,  or  going  to  be  hanged,  which  ii 
reason  ought  to  abate  something  of  your  transport  {i.e.,  at  hear- 
ing he  was  well,  etc.),  or  at  least  considerably  to  modify  it.  I 
am  going  to  the  play  this  evening,  to  have  a  laugh  with 
^^unden.'=     You  have  no  theatre,  I  think  you  told  me,  in  your 

;a)  land  of  d d  realities.     You  naturally"^  lick  your   lips,  and 

envy  me  my  felicity.  Think  but  a  moment,  and  you  will  cor- 
rect the  hateful  emotion.  Wliy,  it  is  Sunday  morning  with  you, 
and  1823.  This  confusion  of  tenses,  this  grand  solecism  oi  two 
presents,  h  in  a  degree  common  to  all  postage.     But  if  I  sent! 

:i.5you  word  to  Bath  or  the  Devizes,  that  I  was  expecting  the 
aforesaid  treat  this  evening,  though  at  the  moment  you  received 
the  intelligence  my  full  feast  of  fun  would  be  over,  yet  there 
would  be  for  a  day  or  two  after,  as  you  would  well  know,  a 
smack,  a  relish  left  upon  my  mental  palate,  which  would  give 


DISTANT    CORBESPONDENTS  127 

rational  encouragement  for  yon  to  foster  a  portion  at  least  of 
the  disagreeable  passion,  which  it  was  in  part  my  intention  to 
produce.  But  ten  months  hence,  your  envy  or  your  sympathy 
would  be  as  useless  as  a  passion  spent  upon  the  dead.  JS'ot 
only  does  truth,  in  these  long  intervals,  unessence  herself,  but  5 
(what  is  harder)  one  cannot  venture  a  crude  fiction  for  the  fear 
that  it  may  ripen  into  a  truth  upon  the  voyage.     AVhat  a  wild 

improbable  banter  I  put  upon  you  some  three  years  since, 

of  Will  Weatherall  having  married  a  servant-maid !     I  remem- 
ber gravely  consulting  you  how  we  were  to  receive  her  —  for  10 
AVill's  wife  was  in  no  case  to  be  rejected ;  and  your  no  less 
serious  replication  in  the  matter ;  how  tenderly  you  advised  an 
abstemious  introduction  of  literary  topics  before  the  lady,  with 
a  caution  not  to  be  too  forward   in   bringing  on  the  carpet 
matters  more  within  the  sphere  of  her  intelligence ;  your  de- 15 
liberate  judgment,  or  rather  wise  suspension  of  sentence,  how 
far  jacks,  and  spits,  and  mops,  could,  with  propriety,  be  intro- 
duced as  subjects;  whether  the  conscious  avoiding  of  all  such, 
matters  in  discourse  would  not  have  a  worse  look   than  the    . 
taking  of  them  casually  in  our  way ;  in  wdiat  manner  w^e  should  20 
carry  ourselves  to  our  maid  Becky,  Mrs.  William  Weatherall 
being  by;  whether  we  should  show"  more  delicacy,  and  a  truer 
sense  of  respect  for  Will's  wife,  by  treating  Becky  wdth  our 
customary  chiding   before  her,  or  by  an   unusual  deferential 
civility  paid  to  Becky  as  to  a  person  of  great  worth,  but  thrown  25 
by  the   caprice  of  fate    into   a   humble    station.     There   were 
difficulties,  I  remember,  on  both  sides,  wiiich  you  did  me  the 
favour  to  state  with  the  precision  of  a  lawyer,  united  to  the 
tenderness  of  a  friend.     I  laughed  in  my  sleeve  at  your  solemn 
I)leadings,  when  lo !  while  I  w^as  valuing  myself  upon  this  flam°30 
put  upon  you  in  New  South  Whales,  the  devil  in  England,  jealous 
possibly  of  any  lie-children  not  his  own,  or  working  after  my  copy, 
has  actually  instigated  our  friend  (not  three  days  since)  to  the 
commission  of  a  matrimony,  which  I  had  only  conjured  up  for 
your  diversion.    William  Weatherall  has  married  Mrs.  Cotterel's  35 
maid.      But  to  take  it  in  its  truest  sense,  you  will  see,  my  dear 
F.,  that  news  from  me  must  become  history  to  you  ;  which  I 
neither  profess  to  w  rite,  nor  indeed  care  much  for  reading.     No 
person,  under  a  diviner,  can,  with  any  prospect  of  veracity, 


128  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

conduct  a  correspondence  at  such  an  arm's  length.  Two 
prophets,  indeed,  might  thus  interchange  intelhgence  with 
effect;  the  epoch  of  the  writer  (Habakkuk)  falling  in  with  the 
true  present  time  of  the  receiver  (Daniel)  ;  but  then  we  are  no 
5  prophets. 

Then  as  to  sentiment  It  fares  little  better  with  that.  This 
kind  of  dish,  above  all,  requires  to  be  served  up  hot ;  or  sent  oft' 
in  water-plates,  that  your  friend  may  have  it  almost  as  warm 
as  yourself.     If  it  have  time  to  cool,  it  is  the  most  tasteless  of  all 

10  cold  meats.  I  have  often  smiled  at  a  conceit  of  the  late  Lord  C. 
It  seems  that  travelling  somewhere  about  Geneva,  he  came  to 
some  pretty  green  spot,  or  nook,  where  a  willow,  or  something, 
hung  so  fantastically  and  invitingly  over  a  stream —  was  it? 
—  or  a  rock  ?  —  no  matter  —  but  the  stillness  and  the  repose, 

15  after  a  weary  journey,  'tis  likely,  in  a  languid  moment  of  his 
Lordship's  hot,  restless  life,  so  took  his  fancy  that  he  could 
imagine  no  place  so  proper,  in  the  event  of  his  death,  to  lay  his 
bones  in.  This  was  all  very  natural  and  excusable  as  a  senti- 
ment, and  shows  his  character  in  a  very  pleasing  light.     But 

20  when  from  a  passing  sentiment  it  came  to  be  an  act ;  and 
when,  by  a  positive  testamentary  disposal,  his  remains  were 
actually  carried  all  that  way  from  England;  who  was  there, 
some  desperate  sentimentalists  excepted,  that  did  not  ask  the 
question.  Why  could  not  his  Lordship  have  found  a  spot  as 

25  solitary,  a  nook  as  romantic,  a  tree  as  green  and  pendent,  with 
a  stream  as  emljlematic  to  his  purpose,  in  Surrey,  in  Dorset,  or 
in  Devon?  Conceive  the  sentiment  boar*''ed  up,  freighted, 
entered  at  the  Custom  House  (startling  the  tide-waiters  with 
the  novelty),  hoisted  into  a  ship.     Conceive  it  pawed  about  and 

:«  handled  between  the  rude  jests  of  tarpaulin  ruffians  —  a  thing 

•  of  Its  delicate  texture  — the  salt  l)ilge  wetting  it  till  it  became 
as  vapid  as  a  damaged  lustring.°  Suppose  it  in  material 
danger  (mariners  have  some  superstition  about  sentiments)  of 
being  tossed  over  in  a  fresh  gale  to  some  propitiatory  shark 

35  (spirit  of  Saint  (iothard,  save  us  from  a  quietus  so  foreign  to 
tlie  deviser's  purpose !)  but  it  has  happily  evaded  a  fishv  con- 
summation. Trace  it  then  to  its  luckv  landing —at  Lyons 
shall  we  say?  — I  have  not  the  map  before  me  — jostled  upon 
four   men's   shoulders  —  baiting   at   this    town  —  stopping    to 


DISTANT    CORRESPONDENTS  129 

refresh  at  t'other  village  —  waiting  a  passport  here,  a  license 
there ;  the  sanction  of  the  magistracy  in  this  district,  the  con- 
currence of  the  ecclesiastics  in  that  canton  ;  till  at  length  it 
arrives  at  its  destination,  tired  out  and  jaded,  from  a  brisk 
sentiment  into  a  feature  of  silly  pride  or  tawdry  senseless  5 
affectation.  How  few  sentiments,  my  dear  F.,  I  am  afraid  we 
can  set  dowm,  in  the  sailor's  phrase,  as  quite  seaworthy. 

Lastly,  as  to  the  agreeable  levities,  which  though  contempt- 
ible in  bulk,  are  the  twinkling  corpuscula  wiiich  should  irradiate 
a  right  friendly  epistle  —  your  puns  and  small  jests  are,  I  appre- 10 
hend,  extremely  circumscribed  in  their  sphere  of  action.  They 
are  so  far  from  a  capacity  of  being  packed  up  and  sent  beyond 
sea,  they  w'ill  scarce  endure  to  be  transported  by  hand  fi-om  this 
room  to  the  next.  Their  vigour  is  as  the  instant  of  their  birth. 
Their  nutriment  for  their  brief  existence  is  the  intellectual  15 
atmosphere  of  the  bystanders  :  or  this  last  is  the  fine  slime  of 
Xilus  —  the  nielior  hitus°  —  whose  maternal  recipiency  is  as 
necessary  as  the  sol  pater°  to  their  equivocal  generation.  A 
pun  hath  a  hearty  kind  of  present  ear-kissing  smack  with  it; 
you  can  no  more  transmit  it  in  its  pristine  flavour  than  you  can  20 
send  a  kiss. —  Have  you  not  tried  in  some  instances  to  palm  off 
a  yesterday's  pun  upon  a  gentleman,  and  has  it  answered?  Not 
but  it  was  new  to  his  hearing,  but  it  did  not  seem  to  come  new 
from  you.  It  did  not  hitch  in.  It  was  like  picking  up  at  a  vil- 
lage ale  house  a  tw'o-days-old  newspaper.  You  have  not  seen  it  25 
before,  but  you  resent  the  stale  thing  as  an  affront.  This  sort 
of  merchandise  aV)ove  all  requires  a  quick  return.  A  pun,  and 
its  recognitory  laugh,  must  be  co-instantaneous.  The  one  is 
the  brisk  lightning,  the  other  the  fierce  thunder.  A  moment's 
interval,  and  the  link  is  snapped.  A  pun  is  reflected  from  a  30 
friend's  face  as  from  a  mirror.  Who  would  consult  his  sweet 
visnomy,  if  the  polished  surface  were  two  or  three  minutes  (not 
to  sp(!ak  of  twelvemonths,  my  dear  F.)  in  giving  back  its  co})y? 

I  cannot  image  to  myself  whereabout  you  are.  When  I  try 
to  fix  it,  Peter  Wilkins's  island  comes  across  me.  Sometimes  35 
you  seem  to  be  in  the  Hades  of  Thieves.  I  see  Diogenes°  pry- 
ing among  you  with  his  perpetual  fruitless  lantern.  What  must 
you  1)6  willing  by  this  time  to  give  for  the  sight  of  an  honest 
man  !    You  must  almost  have  forgotten  how  ive  look.    And  tell  me 

K 


130  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

what  your  Sydiieyites  do  ?  are  they  th**v*Dg  all  day  long  ?  ]\Ier- 
cit'ul  ileaveii!  what  property  can  stand  against  such  a  depreda- 
tion !  The  kangaroos  —  your  Aborigines  —  do  they  keep  their 
primitive  simplicity  un-Europe-tainted,  with  those  little  short 
5  fore  puds,  looking  like  a  lesson  framed  by  nature  to  the  pick- 
pocket !  Marry,  "for  diving  into  fobs  they  are  rather  lamely 
provided  a  priori;  but  if  the  hue  and  cry  were  once  up,  they 
would  show  as  fair  a  pair  of  hind-shifters  as  the  expertest  loco- 
motor in  the  colony.     We  hear  the  most  improbable  tales  at 

10  this  distance.  Pray,  is  it  true  that  the  young  Spartans  among 
you  are  born  with  six  fingers,  which  spoils  their  scanning  ?  — 
It  must  look  very  odd  ;  but  use  reconciles.  For  their  scansion, 
it  is  less  to  be  regretted;  for  if  they  take  it  into  their  heads  to 
be  poets,  it  is  odds  but  they  turn  out,  the  greater  part  of  them, 

15  vile  plagiarists.  —  Is  there  much  difference  to  see,  too,  between 
the  son  of  a  th**f  and  the  grandson  ?  or  where  does  the  taint 
stop?  Do  you  bleach  in  three  or  in  four  generations?  I  have 
many  questions  to  put,  but  ten  Delphic^  voyages  can  be  made 
in  a  shorter  time  than  it  will  take  to  satisfy  my  scruples.     Do 

20 you  grow  your  own  hemp?  —  What  is  your  staple  trade,  —  ex- 
clusive of  the  national  profession,  I  mean?  Your  locksmiths,  I 
take  it,  are  some  of  your  great  capitalists. 

I  am  insensibly  chatting  to  you  as  familiarly  as  w^hen  we 
used  to  exchange  good-morrows  out  of  our  old  contiguous  win- 

25  dows,  in  pump-famed  Hare  Court  in  the  Temple.°  Why  did 
you  ever  leave  that  quiet  corner? —  Why  did  I?  — with  its  com- 
plement of  four  poor  elms,  from  whose  smoke-dyed  barks,  the 
theme  of  jesting  ruralists,  I  picked  my  first  lady-birds!  My 
heart  is  as  dry  as  that  spring  sometimes  proves  in  a  thirsty 

iiO  August,  when  I  revert  to  the  space  that  is  between  us  ;  a  length 
of  passage  enough  to  render  obsolete  the  phrases  of  our  Engfish 
letters  before  they  can  reach  you.  But  while  I  talk  I  think  you 
hear  me,  —  thoughts  dallying  with  vain  surmise  — 

Aye  me !  while  thee  the  seas  and  sounding  shores 
35  Hold  far  away.° 

Come  back,  before  I  am  grown  into  a  very  old  man,  so  as  you 
shall  hardly  know  me.    Come,  before  Bridget  w^alks  on  crutches. 


THE    PRAISE    OF    CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS  131 

Girls  whom  you  left  cliildreii  have  become  sage  matrons  while 
you  are  tarrying  there.  The  blooming  Miss  W — r  (you  remem- 
ber Sally  W — r)  called  upon  us  yesterday,  an  aged  crone.  Folks 
whom  you  knew  die  olf  every  year.  Formerly,  1  thought  that 
death  was  wearing  out,  —  I  stood  ramparted  about  v/ith  so  many  5 
healthy  friends.  The  departure  of  J.  W.,  two  springs  back, 
corrected  my  delusion.  Since  then  the  old  divorcer  has  been 
busy.  If  you  do  not  make  haste  to  return,  there  will  be  little 
left  to  greet  vou,  of  me,  or  mine. 


THE  PRAISE   OF   CHIMXEY-SWEEPERS 

I  LIKE  to  meet  a  sweep  —  understand  me  —  not  a  grown  10 
sweeper  —  old  chimney-sweepers  are  by  no  means  attractive  — 
but  one  of  those  tender  novices,  blooming  through  their  first  nig- 
ritude, the  maternal  washings  not  quite  effaced  from  the  cheek 
—  such  as  come  forth  with  the  dawn,  or  somewhat  earlier,  with 
their  little  professional  notes  sounding  like  the  peep-pee/f  of  a  15 
young  sparrow;  or  liker  to  the  matin  lark  should  I  pronounce 
Ihem,  in  their  aerial  ascents  not  seldom  anticipating  the  sun- 
rise ? 

I  have  a  kindly  yearning  towards  these  dim  specks  —  i^or 
blots  —  innocent  blacknesses —  20 

I  reverence  these  young  Africans  of  our  own  growth  —  these 
almost  clergy  imps,  who  sport  their  cloth  without  assumption ; 
and  from  their  little  pulpits  (the  tops  of  chimneys),  in  the  nip- 
ping air  of  a  December  morning,  preach  a  lesson  of  patience  to 
mankind.  25 

When  a  child,  what  a  mysterious  pleasure  it  was  to  witness 
their  operation!  to  see  a  chit  no  bigger  than  one's  self  enter, 
one  knew  not  by  what  process,  into  what  seemed  the  fauces 
Avern'f  —  to  pursue  him  in  imagination,  as  he  went  sound- 
ing on  through  so  many  dark  stifling  caverns,  horrid  shades !  30 
to  shudder  with  the  idea  that  •'  now,  surely  he  must  be  lost  for 
ever!"  —  to  revive  at  hearing  his  feeble  shout  of  discovered 
daylight  —  and  then  (O  fulness  of  delight!)  running  out  of 
doors,  to  come  just  in  time  to  see  the  sable  phenomenon  emerge 


132  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

in  safety,  the  brandished  weapon  of  his  art  victorious  like  some 
flag  waved  over  a  conquered  citadel !  I  seem  to  remember  hav- 
ing been  told,  uhat  a  bad  sweep  was  once  left  in  a  stack  witli 
his  brush,  to  indicate  which  way  the  wind  blew.     It  was  an 

5  awful  spectacle,  certainly;  not  much  unlike  the  old  stage- direc- 
tion in  Macbeth,  where  the  "  Apparition  of  a  child  crowned,  with 
a  tree  in  his  hand,  rises." 

Reader,  if  thou  meetest  one  of  these  small  gentry  in  thy  early 
rambles,  it  is  good  to  give  him  a  penny,  —  it  is  better  to  give 

10  him  two-pence.  If  it  be  starving  weather,  and  to  the  proper 
troubles  of  his  hard  occupation,  a  pair  of  kibed°  heels  (no 
unusual  accompaniment)  be  superadded,  the  demand  on  thy 
humanity  will  surely  rise  to  a  tester. 

There  is  a  composition,  the  groundwork  of  which  I   have 

15  understood  to  be  the  sweet  wood  yclept  sassafras.  This  wood 
boiled  down  to  a  kind  of  tea,  and  tempered  with  an  infusion  of 
milk  and  sugar,  hath  to  some  tastes  a  delicacy  beyond  the 
China  luxury.  I  know  not  how  thy  palate  may  relish  it  ;  for 
myself,  with  every  deference  to  the  judicious  Mr.  Read,  who 

20  hath  time  out  of  mind  kept  open  a  shop  (the  only  one  he  avers 
in  London)  for  the  vending  of  this  "  wholesome  and  pleasant 
beverage,"  on  the  south  side  of  Fleet-street,  as  thou  approacliest 
Bridge-street  —  the  only  Salopian  home,  —  I  have  never  yet 
adventured  to  dip  my  own  particular  lip  in  a  basin  of  his  com- 

25  mended  ingredients  —  a  cautious  premonition  to  the  olfactories 
constantly  whispering  to  me,  that  my  stomach  must  infallibly, 
with  all  due  courtesy,  decline  it.  Yet  I  have  seen  palates, 
otherwise  not  uninstructed  in  dietetical  elegancies,  sup  it  up 
with  avidity. 

30  I  know  not  by  what  particular  conformation  of  the  organ  it 
happens,  but  I  have  always  found  that  this  composition  is  sur- 
prisingly gratifying  to  the  palate  of  a  young  chimney-sweeper 
—  whether  the  oily  particles  (sassafras'  is  slightly  oleaginous) 
do  attenuate  and  soften  the  fuliginous''  concretions,  which  are 

a5  sometimes  found  (in  dissections)  to  adhere  to  the  roof  of  the 
mouth  in  these  unfledged  practitioners;  or  whether  Nature, 
sensible  that  she  had  mingled  too  much  of  bitter  wood  in  the 
lot  of  these  raw  victims,  caused  to  grow  out  of  the  earth  her 
sassafras  for  a  sweet  lenitive  —  but  so  it  is,  that  no  possible 


THE    PRAISE    OF    CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS  133 

taste  or  odour  to  the  senses  of  a  young  chimney-sweeper  can 
convey  a  delicate  excitement  comparable  to  this  mixture. 
Being-  penniless,  they  will  yet  hang  their  black  heads  over  the 
ascending  steam,  to  gratify  one  sense  if  possible,  seemingly  no 
less  pleased  than  those  domestic  animals — cats  —  when  they  5 
purr  over  a  new-found  sprig  of  valerian.  There  is  something 
more  in  these  sympathies  than  philosophy  can  inculcate. 

Now  albeit  Mr.  Read  boasteth,  not  without  reason,  tiiat  his  is 
the  only  Salopian  house ;  yet  be  it  known  to  thee.  Reader — if 
thou  art  one  who  keepest  what  are  called  good  hours,  thou  art  10 
haply  ignorant  of  the  fact  —  he  hath  a  race  of  industrious 
imitators,  who  from  stalls,  and  under  open  sky,  dispense  the 
same  savoury  mess  to  humbler  customers,  at  that  dead  time  of 
the  dawn,  when  (as  extremes  meet)  the  rake,  reeling  home 
from  his  midnight  cups,  and  the  hard-handed  artisan  leaving  15 
his  bed  to  resume  the  premature  labours  of  the  day,  jostle,  not 
unfrequently  to  the  manifest  disconcerting  of  the  former,  for 
the  honours  of  the  pavement.  It  is  the  time  when,  in  summer, 
between  the  expired  and  the  not  yet  relumined  kitchen-fires, 
the  kennels  of  our  fair  metropolis  give  forth  their  least  satisfac-20 
tory  odours.  The  rake,  who  wisheth  to  dissipate  his  o'ernight 
vapours  in  more  grateful  coffee,  curses  the  ungenial  fume,  as 
he  passeth ;  but  the  artisan  stops  to  taste,  and  blesses  the 
fragrant  breakfast. 

This  is  Saloop°  —  the  precocious  herb-woman's  darling  —  the  25 
delight   of   the  early  gardener,  who   transports    his    smoking 
cahl3ages   by  break    of    day  from     Hammersmith    to    Covent 
Garden's  famed  piazzas  — the  delight,  and  oh  !  I  fear,  too  often 
the  envy,  of  the  unpennied  sweep.     Him  shouldst  thou  haply 
encounter,  with  his  dim  visage  pendent  over  the  grateful  steam,  30 
regale  him  with  a  sumptuous  basin  (it  will  cost  thee  but  three- 
halfpennies)  and  a  slice  of  delicate  bread  and  butter  (an  added 
halfpenny)  — so  may  thy  culinary  fires,  eased  of  the  o'ercharged 
secretions  from  thy  worse-placed  hospitalities,  curl  up  a  lighter 
volume  to  the  welkin°  —  so  may  the  descending  soot  never  taint  35 
thy  costly  well-ingredienced  soups  —  nor  the  odious  cry,  quick- 
reaching  from  street  to  street,  of  the  fired  chimney,  invite  the 
rattling  engines  from  ten  adjacent  parishes,  to  disturb  for  a 
casual  scintillation  thy  peace  and  pocket ! 


134  THE   ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

I  am  by  nature  extremely  susceptible  of  street  affronts ;  the 
jeers  and  taunts  of  the  populace;  the  low-bred  triumph  they 
display  over  the  casual  trip,  or  splashed  stocking",  of  a  gentle- 
man. Yet  can  I  endure  the  jocularity  of  a  young  sweep  with 
5  something  more  than  forgiveness.  —  In  the  last  winter  but  one, 
pacing  along  Cheapside  with  my  accustomed  precipitation  when 
1  Avalk  westward,  a  treacherous  slide  brought  me  apon  my  back 
in  an  instant.  I  scrambled  up  with  pain  and  shame  enough  — 
yet  outwardly  trying  to  face  it  down,  as  if  nothing  had  hap- 

lOpened  —  when  the  roguish  grin  of  one  of  these  young  wits 
encountered  me.  There  he  stood,  pointing  me  out  with  his 
dusky  finger  to  the  mob,  and  to  a  poor  woman  (I  suppose  his 
mother)  in  particular,  till  the  tears  for  the  exquisiteness  of  tlie 
fun  (so  he  thought  it)  worked  themselves  out  the  corners  of  his 

15  poor  red  eyes,  red  from  many  a  previous  weeping,  and  soot- 
inflamed,  yet  twinkling  through  all  with  such  a  joy,  snatched 

out  of  desolation,  that  Hogarth but  Hogarth  has  got  him 

already  (how  could  he  miss  him  ?)  in  the  March  to  Finchley, 
grinning  at  the  pieman  —  there  he  stood,  as  he  stands  in  the 

20  picture,  irremovable,  as  if  the  jest  was  to  last  for  ever  —  with 
such  a  maximum  of  glee,  and  minimum  of  mischief,  in  his 
mirth  —  for  the  grin  of  a  genuine  sweep  hath  absolutely  no 
malice  in  it  —  that  I  could  have  been  content,  if  the  honour  of 
a  gentleman  might  endure  it,  to  have  remained  his  butt  and 

25  his  mockery  till  midnight. 

I  am  by  theory  obdurate  to  the  seductiveness  of  what  are 
called  a  fine  set  of  teeth.  Every  pair  of  rosy  lips  (the  ladies 
must  paidon  me)  is  a  casket  presumably  holding  such  jewels; 
but,  methinks,  they  should  take  leave  to  •*  air  "  them  as  frugally 

30  as  possible.  The  fine  lady,  or  fine  gentleman,  who  show  me 
their  teeth,  show  me  bones.  Yet  must  I  confess,  that  from  the 
mouth  of  a  true  sweep  a  display  (even  to  ostentation)  of  those 
white  and  shiny  ossifications,  strikes  me  as  an  agreeable 
anomaly  in  manners,  and  an  allowable  piece  of  foppery.     It  is, 

35  as  when 

A  sable  cloud 
Turus  forth  her  silver  lining  ou  the  night. 

It  is  like  some  remnant  of  gentry  not  quite  extinct ;  a  badge 
of  better  days  ;  a  hint  of  nobility  :  —  and,  doubtless,  under  th€ 


THE    PRAISE    OF    CHIMXEY-SWEEPERS  135 

obscuring  darkness  and  double  night  of  their  forlorn  disguise- 
laent,  oftentimes  lurketh  good  blood,  and  gentle  conditions, 
derived  from  lost  ancestry,  and  a  lapsed  pedigree.  The  pre- 
mature apprenticements  of  these  tender  victims  give  but  too 
much  encouragement,  I  fear,  to  clandestine  and  almost  infantile  5 
abductions;  the  seeds  of  civility  and  true  courtesy,  so  often 
discernible  in  these  young  grafts  (not  otherwise  to  be  accounted 
for)  plainly  hint  at  some  forced  adoptions ;  many  noble  Rachels° 
mourning  for  their  children,  even  in  our  days,  countenance  the 
fact ;  the  tales  of  fairy-spiriting  may  shadow  a  lamentable  10 
verity,  and  the  recovery  of  the  young  Montagu°  be  but  a  solitary 
instance  of  good  fortune  out  of  many  irreparable  and  hopeless 
defiUations. 

In  one  of  the  state-beds  at  Arundel  Castle,  a  few  years  since 
—  under  a  ducal  canopy  —  (that  seat  of  the  Howards  is  an  15 
object  of  curiosity  to  visitors,  chiefly  for  its  beds,  in  which  the 
late  duke  was  especially  a  connoisseur) — encircled  with  cur- 
tains of  delicatest  crimson,  with  starry  coronets  inwoven  — 
folded  between  a  pair  of  sheets  whiter  and  softer  than  the  lap 
where  Venus  lulled  Ascanius"^  —  was  discovered  by  chance,  after  20 
all  methods  of  search  had  failed,  at  noon-day,  fast  asleejD,  a  lost 
chimney-sweeper.  The  little  creature,  having  somehow  con- 
founded his  passage  among  the  intricacies  of  those  lordly  chim- 
neys, by  some  unknown  aperture  had  alighted  upon  this 
magnificent  chamber  ;  and,  tired  with  his  tedious  explorations,  25 
was  unable  to  resist  the  delicious  invitement  to  repose,  which 
he  there  saw  exhibited ;  so,  creeping  between  the  sheets  very 
quietly,  laid  his  black  head  upon  the  pillow,  and  slept  like  a 
young  Howard. 

Such  is  the  account  given  to  the  visitors  at  the  Castle.  —  But  30 
I  cannot  help  seeming  to  perceive  a  confirmation  of  what  I  had 
just  hinted  at  in  this  story.  A  high  instinct  was  at  work  in 
the  case,  or  I  am  mistaken.  Is  it  probable  that  a  poor  child  of 
that  description,  with  whatever  weariness  he  might  be  visited, 
would  have  ventured,  under  such  a  penalty  as  he  would  be  taught  35 
to  expect,  to  uncover  the  sheets  of  a  Duke's  bed,  and  deliberately 
to  lay  himself  down  between  them,  when  the  rug,  or  the  carpet, 
presented  aii  obvious  couch,  still  far  above  his  pretensions  —  is 
this  probable,  I  would  ask,  if  the  great  power  of  nature,  which 


136  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

I  contend  for,  liad  not  been  manifested  within  him,  prompting 
to  the  adventure  ?  Doubtless  this  young  nobleman  (for  such 
my  mind  misgives  me  that  he  must  be)  was  allured  by  some 
memory,  not  amounting  to  full  consciousness,  of  his  condition 

Sin  infancy,  when  he  was  used  to  be  lapped  by  his  mother,  or  his 
nurse,  in  just  such  sheets  as  he  there  found,  into  which  he  was 
now  but  creeping  back  as  into  his  proper  incunahula°  and  rest- 
ing-place.—  By  no  other  theory  than  by  this  sentiment  of  a 
pre-existent  state  (as  I  may  call  it),  can  I  explain  a  deed  so 

10  venturous,  and,  indeed,  upon  any  other  system,  so  indecorous, 
in  this  tender,  but  unseasonable,  sleeper. 

My  pleasant  friend  Jem  White  was  so  impressed  with  a 
belief  of  metamorphoses  like  this  frequently  taking  place,  tliat 
in  some  sort  to  reverse  the  wrongs  of  fortune  in  these  poor 

15  changelings,  he  instituted  an  annual  feast  of  chimney-sweepers, 
at  which  it  was  his  pleasure  to  officiate  as  host  and  waiter.  It 
was  a  solemn  supper  held  in  Smithfield,  upon  the  yearly  return 
of  the  fair  of  St.  Bartholomew.^  Cards  were  issued  a  week 
before  to  the  master-sweeps  in  and  about  the  metropolis,  confin- 

20  ing  the  invitation  to  their  younger  fry.  Xow  and  then  an 
elderly  stripling  would  get  in  among  us,  and  be  good-naturedly 
winked  at ;  but  our  main  body  were  infantry.  One  unfortunate 
wight,  indeed,  who,  relying  upon  his  dusky  suit,  had  intruded 
himself  into  our  party,  but  by  tokens  was  providentially  dis- 

25  covered  in  time  to  be  no  chimney-sweeper,  (all  is  not  soot  which 
looks  so,)  was  quoited°  out  of  the  presence  with  universal 
indignation,  as  n6t  having  on  the  wedding  garment°;  but  in 
general  the  greatest  harmony  prevailed.  The  place  chosen 
was  a   convenient    spot   among   the   pens,    at  the    north   side 

30  of  the  fair,  not  so  far  distant  as  to  be  impervious  to  the  agree- 
able hubbub  of  that  vanity;  but  remote  enough  not  to  be 
obvious  to  the  interruption  of  every  gaping  spectator  in  it. 
The  guests  assembled  about  seven.  In  those  little  temporary 
parlours  three  tables  were  spread  with  naper}-,  not  so  fine  as 

35  substantial,  and  at  every  board  a  comely  hostess  presided  with 
her  pan  of  hissing  sausages.  The  nostrils  of  the  young  rogues 
dilated  at  the  savour.  James  White,  as  head*^  waiter,  had 
charge  of  the  first  table ;  and  myself,  with  our  trusty  compan- 
ion Bigod,  ordinarily  ministered"^  to  the  other  two.     There  was 


THE    PRAISE    OF    CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS  137 

clambering  and  jostling,  you  may  be  sure,  who  should  get  at  the 
first  table,  —  for  Rochester  in  his  maddest  days  could  not  have 
done  the  humours  of  the  scene  with  more  spirit  than  my  friend. 
After  some  general  expression  of  thanks  for  the  honour  the 
company  had  done  him,  his  inaugural  ceremony  was  to  clasps 
the  greasy  waist  of  old  dame  Ursula  (the  fattest  of  the  three), 
that  stood  frying  and  fretting,  half-blessing,  half-cursing  "  the 
gentleman,"  and  imprint  upon  her  chaste  lips  a  tender  salute, 
whereat  the  universal  host  would  set  up  a  shout  that  toi-e  the 
concave,  while  hundreds  of  grinning  teeth  startled  the  night  1 
with  their  brightness.  0  it  was  a  pleasure  to  see  the  sable 
younkers  lick  in  the  unctuous  meat,  with  his  more  unctuous 
sayings — how  he  would  fit  the  tit-bits  to  the  puny  mouths, 
reserving  the  lengthier  links  for  the  seniors — how  he  would 
intercept  a  morsel  even  in  the  jaws  of  some  young  desperado,  13 
declaring  it  "  must  to  the  pan  again  to  be  browned,  for  it  was 
not  fit  for  a  gentleman's  eating"  —  how  he  would  recommend 
this  slice  of  white  bread,  or  that  piece  of  kissing-crust,  to  a 
tender  juvenile,  advising  them  all  to  have  a  care  of  cracking 
their  teeth,  which  were  their  best  patrimony,  —  how  genteelly  20 
he  would  deal  about  the  small  ale,  as  if  it  were  wine,  naming  the 
brew^er,  and  protesting,  if  it  were  not  good,  he  should  lose  their 
custom ;  with  a  special  recommendation  to  wipe  the  lip  before 
drinking.  Then  we  had  our  toasts  —  "  the  King,"  —  "  the 
Cloth,"  —  which,  whether  they  understood  or  not,  was  equally  25 
diverting  and  flattering ;  —  and  for  a  crowning  sentiment,  wdiich 
never  failed,  "May  the  Brush  supersede  the  Laurel!"  All 
these,  and  fifty  other  fancies,  which  were  rather  felt  than  com- 
prehended by  his  guests,  would  he  utter,  standing  upon  tables, 
and  prefacing  every  sentiment  with  a  "  Gentlemen,  give  me  the  30 
leave  to  propose  so  and  so,"  which  was  a  prodigious  comfort  to 
those  young  orphans;  every  now  and  then  stufiing  into  his 
mouth  (for  it  did  not  do  to  be  squeamish  on  these  occasions) 
indiscriminate  pieces  of  those  reeking  sausages,  wdiich  pleased 
them  mightily,  and  was  the  savouriest  part,  you  may  believe,  of  35 
the  entertainment. 

Golden  lads  and  lasses  must, 

As  chimney-sweepers,  come  to  dust° — 


138  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

James  AVhite  is  extinct,  and  with  liim  these  suppers  have 
long  ceased.  He  carried  away°  with  him  half  the  fim  of  the 
world  NY  hen  he  died  —  of  my  world  at  least.  His  old  clients 
look  for  him  among  the  pens  ;  and,  missing  him,  reproach  the 
5  altered  feast  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  the  glory  of  Smithfield 
departed  for  ever. 


A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS, 

IX    THE    METROPOLIS 

The  all-sweeping  besom  °  of  societarian  reformation  —  your 
only  modern  Alcides' club  °  to  rid  the  time  of  its  abuses  —  is 
uplift  with  many-handed  sway  to  extirpate  the  last  fluttering 

10  tatters  of  the  bugbear  ^Iexdicity  from  the  metropolis.  Scrips, 
wallets,  bags  —  staves,  dogs,  and  crutches — the  whole  mendicant 
fraternity,  with  all  their  baggage,  are  fast  posting  out  of  the 
purlieus  of  this  eleventh  persecution.  From  the  crowded  cross- 
ing, from  the  corners  of  streets  and  turnings  of  alleys,  the  part- 

15  ing  Genius  of  Beggary  is  "  with  sighing  sent." 

I  do  not  approve  of  this  wholesale  going  to  work,  this  im- 
pertinent crusado,  or  helium  ad  exterminatione.m°  proclaimed 
against  a  species.  Much  good  might  be  sucked  from  these 
Beggars. 

20  They  were  the  oldest  and  the  honourablest  form  of  pauper- 
ism. Their  appeals  were  to  our  common  natnre ;  less  revolting 
to  an  ingenuous  mind  than  to  be  a  suppliant  to  the  particular 
humours  or  caprice  of  any  fellow-creature,  or  set  of  fellow- 
creatures,  parochial  or  societarian.     Theirs  were  the  only  rates 

25  unin vidians  in  the  levy,  ungrudged  in  the  assessment. 

There  was  a  dignity  springing  from  the  very  depth  of  their 
desolation ;  as  to  be  naked  is  to  be  so  much  nearer  to  the  being 
a  man,  than  to  go  in  livery. 

The  greatest  spirits  have  felt  this  in  their  reverses  ;  and  when 

30  Dionysius  °  from  king  turned  schoolmaster,  do  we  feel  anything 
towards  him  but  contempt?  Could  Vandyke  have  made  a 
picture  of  him,  swaying  a  ferula  for  a  sceptre,  which  would 


A   'COMPLAINT    OF    THE    DECAY    OF    BEGGARS     139 

have  affected  our  minds  with  the  same  heroic  pity,  the  same 
compassionate  admiration,  with  which  we  regard  his  Belisarius° 
begging  for  an  ohohisf  Would  the  moral  have  been  more 
graceful,  more  pathetic? 

The  Blind  Beggar  in  the  legend  °  —  the  father  of  pretty  Bessy  5 
—  whose  story  doggerel  rhymes  and  ale-house  signs  cannot  so 
degrade  or  attenuate  but  that  some  sparks  of  a  lustrous  spirit 
will  shine  through  the  disguisements  —  this  noble  Earl  of  Corn- 
wall (as  indeed  he  was)  and  memorable  sport  of  fortune,  flee- 
ing from  the  unjust  sentence  of  his  liege  lord,  stript  of  all,  and  10 
seated  on  the  flowering  green  of  Bethnal,  with  his  more  fresh 
and  springing  daughter  by  his  side,  illumining  his  rags  and  his 
beggary —  would  the  child  and  parent  have  cut  a  better  figure 
doing  the  honours  of  a  counter,  or  expiating  their  fallen  condi- 
tion upon  the  three-foot  eminence  of  some  sempstering  shop- 15 
board  ? 

In  tale  or  history  your  Beggar  is  ever  the  just  antipode  to 
your  King.  The  poets  and  romancical  writers  (as  dear  jNIargaret 
Newcastle  would  call  them),  when  they  would  most  sharply 
and  feelingly  paint  a  reverse  of  fortune,  never  stop  till  they  20 
have  brought  dowm  their  hero  in  good  earnest  to  rags  and  the 
wallet.  The  depth  of  the  descent  illustrates  the  height  he  falls 
from.  There  is  no  medium  which  can  be  presented  to  the 
imagination  without  offence.  There  is  no  breaking  the  fall. 
Lear,°  thrown  from  his  palace,  must  divest  him  of  his  gar- 25 
ments,  till  he  answer  "mere  nature;"  and  Cresseid,°  fallen 
from  a  prince's  love,  must  extend  her  pale  arms,  pale  with  other 
whiteness  than  of  beauty,  supplicating  lazar  arms  with  bell  and 
clap-dish. 

The  Lucian  wits  knew  this  very  well ;  and,  with  a  converse  30 
policy,  when  they  would  express  scorn  of  greatness  without  the 
pity,  they  show  us  an  Alexander  in  the  shades  cobbling  shoes, 
or  a  Semiramis  °  getting  up  foul  linen. 

How  would  it  sound  in  song,  that  a  great  monarch  had  de- 
clined his  affections  upon  the  daughter  of  a  baker !  yet  do  we  35 
feel  the  imagination  at  all  violated  when  we  read  the  "true 
ballad,"  where  King  Cophetua  woos  the  beggar  maid? 

Pauperism,  pauper,  poor  man,  are  expressions  of   pity,  but 
pity  alloyed   with    contempt.      No  one  properly   contemns  a 


140  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Beggar.  Poverty  is  a  comparative  thing,  and  each  degree  of  it 
is  mocked  by  its"  neighbour  grice."  Its  poor  rents  and  com- 
ings-in  are"  soon  summed  up  and  told.  Its  pretences  to 
property  are  almost  ludicrous.  Its  pitiful  attempts  to  save 
5  excite  a  smile.  Every  scornful  companion  can  weigh  his 
trifle-bigger  purse  against  it.  Poor  man  reproaches  poor  man 
in  the  streets  with  impolitic  mention  of  his  conditiou.  his  own 
being  a  shade  better,  while  the  rich  pass  by  and  jeer  at  both. 
No  rascally  comparative  iusults  a  Beggar,  or  thinks  of  weighing 

10  purses  with  him.  He  is  not  in  the  scale  of  comparison.  He  is 
not  under  the  measure  of  property.  He  confessedly  hath  none, 
any  more  than  a  dog  or  a  sheep.  No  one  twitteth  him  with 
ostentation  above  his  means.  No  one  accuses  him  of  pride,  or 
upbraideth  him  with  mock  humility.     None  jostle  with  him  for 

15  the  wall,  or  pick  quarrels  for  precedency.  No  wealthy  neighbour 
seeketh  to  eject  him  from  his  tenement.  No  man  sues  him. 
No  man  goes  to  law  with  him.  If  I  were  not  the  independent 
gentleman  that  I  am,  rather  than  I  would  be  a  retainer  to  the 
great,  a  led  captain,  or  a  poor  relation,  I  would  choose,  out  of 

20  the  delicacy  and  true  greatness  of  my  mind,  to  be  a  Beggar. 

Rags,  which  are  the  reproach   of  poverty,  are  the  Beggar's 

robes,  and  graceful  insignia  of   his  profession,  his   tenure,  his 

full  dress,  the  suit  in  which  he  is  expected  to  show  himself  in 

public.     He  is  never  out  of  the  fashion,  or  limpeth  awkwardly 

'25  behind  it.  He  is  not  required  to  put  on  court  mourning.  He 
weareth  all  colours,  fearing  none.  His  costume  hath  under- 
gone less  change  than  the  Quaker's.  He  is  the  only  man  in  the 
universe  who  is  not  obliged  to  study  appearances.  The  ups 
and  downs  of   the  world  concern  him   no   longer.      He    alone 

:K)  coutinueth  in  one  stay.  The  price  of  stock  or  land  affecteth 
him  not.  The  flnctaations  of  agricultural  or  commercial 
prosperity  touch  him  not,  or  at  worst  but  change  his  customers. 
He  is  not  expected  to  become  bail  or  surety  for  any  one.  No 
man  troubleth  him  with  questioning  his  religion  or   politics. 

35  He  is  the  only  free  man  in  the  universe. 

The  Mendicants  of  this  great  city  were  so  many  of  her  sights, 
her  lions.  I  can  no  more  spare  them  than  I  could  the  Cries  of 
London.  No  corner  of  a  street  is  complete  without  them. 
They  are  as  indispensable  as  the  Ballad  Singer;  and  in  their 


A    COMPLAINT    OF    THE    DECAY    OF    BEGGARS     141 

picturesque  attire  as  ornamental  as  the  signs  of  old  London. 
They  were  the  standing  morals,  emblems,  mementoes,  dial- 
mottoes,  the  spital  sermons,°  the  books  for  children,  the 
salutary  checks  and  pauses  to  the  high  and  rushing  tide  of 
greasy  citizenry  —  5 

Look 


Upon  that  poor  and  broken  bankrupt  there." 

Above  all,  those  old  blind  Tobits°  that  used  to  line  the  wall 
of   Lincoln's-mn    Garden,   before    modern   fastidiousness    had 
expelled  them,  casting  up  their  ruined  orbs  to  catch  a  ray  of  10 
pity,  and  (if  possible)  of  light,  with  their  faithful  Dog  Guide 
at  their  feet,  —  whither   are  they  fled  ?   or    into  what  corners, 
blind  as  themselves,  have  they  been  driven,  out  of  the  whole- 
some air  and  sun-warmth  ?  immersed  between   four  walls,  in 
what   withering   poor-house    do   they   endure   the   penalty   of  15 
double  darkness,  where  the  chink  of   the  dropt  halfpenny  no 
more  consoles  their  forlorn  bereavement,  far  from  the  sound  of 
the  cheerful  and  hope-stirring  tread  of  the  passenger?     Where 
hang  their  useless  staves  ?  and  who  will  farm  their  dogs  ?  — 
Have  the  overseers  of  St.  L — caused  them  to  be  shot?  or  were  20 
they  tied  up  in  sacks  and  dropt  into  the  Thames,  at  the  sugges- 
tion of  B — the  mild  rector  of ? 

Well  fare  the  soul  of  unfastidious  Vincent  Bourne,  most 
classical,  and,  at  the  same  time,  most  English  of  the 
Latinists !  —  who  has  treated  of  this  human  and  quadrupedal  25 
alliance,  this  dog  and  man  friendship,  in  the  sweetest  of  his 
poems,  the  Epitaphium  in  Canem,  or.  Dog's  Epitaph.  Reader, 
peruse  it;  and  say,  if  customary  sights,  which  could  call  up 
such  gentle  poetry  as  this,  were  of  a  nature  to  do  more  harm  or 
good  to  the  moral  sense  of  the  passengers  through  the  daily  30 
thoroughfares  of  a  vast  and  busy  metropolis. 

Pauperis  hie  Iri  requiesco  Lyciscus,  herilis, 

Dum  vixi,  tutela  vigil  columeuque  senectre, 

Dux  c3eco  fidus  :  nee,  me  ducente,  solebat, 

Praetenso  bine  atque  bine  baculo,  per  iniqua  locorum  35 

Incertam  explorare  viam  ;  sed  fila  secutus, 

Quae  dubios  regerent  passes,  vestigia  tuta 


142  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 


Fixit  inoffenso  gressu  ;  gelicUimque  sedile 
In  uudo  uactus  saxo,  qua  prjetereuntium 
Unda  frequens  confluxit,  ibi  miserisque  tenebras 
Lamentis,  noctemque  oculis  ploravit  obortam. 
6  Ploravit  nee  frustra  ;  obolnm  dedit  alter  et  alter, 

Quels  corda  et  mentem  iudiderat  natura  benignam. 
Ad  latus  interea  jacui  sopitus  herile, 
Vel  mediis  vigil  in  somnis  ;  ad  herilia  jussa 
Auresque  atque  animum  arrectus,  sen  frustula amice 

10  Porrexit  sociasque  dapes,  sen  longa  diei 

Tredia  perpessus,  reditum  sub  nocte  parabat. 
Hi  mores,  hsec  vita  fuit,  dum  fata  sinebant, 
Dum  neqne  languebam  morbis,  nee  inerte  senecta 
Qufe  tandem  obrepsit,  veterique  satellite  esecum 

15  Orbavit  domiuum  ;  prisei  sed  gratia  faeti 

Ne  tota  intereat,  longos  deleta  per  annos, 
Exiguum  bunc  Irus  tumulum  de  cespite  fecit, 
Etsi  inopis,  nou  ingratte,  muuuscula  dextrae  ; 
Carmine  signavitque  brevi,  dominumque  eanemque, 

20  Quod  memoret,  fidumque  canem  dominumque  beuignunio 

Poor  Irus'  faithful  wolf-dog  here  I  lie, 
That  wont  to  tend  my  old  blind  master's  steps. 
His  guide  and  guard ':  nor.  while  my  serviee  lasted, 
Had  he  occasion  for  that  staff,  with'which 

25  He  now  goes  picking  out  his  path  in  fear 

Over  the  highways  and  crossings  ;  but  Avould  plant, 
Safe  in  the  conduct  of  my  friendly  string, 
A  firm  foot  forward  still,  till  he  had  reach'd 
His  poor  seat  on  some  stone,  nigh  where  the  tide 

30  Of  passers-by  in  thickest  continence  flow'd  : 

To  whom  with  loud  and  passionate  laments 
From  morn  to  eve  his  dark  estate  he  wail'd. 
Nor  wail'd  to  all  in  vain :  some  here  and  there, 
The  well-disposed  and  good,  their  pennies  gave. 

35  I  meantime  at  his  feet  obsequious  slept ; 

Not  all-asleep  in  sleep,  but  heart  and  ear 
Prick'd  up  at  his  least  motion ;  to  receive 
At  his  kind  hand  my  customary  crumbs. 
And  common  portion  in  his  feast  of  scraps : 

40  S^.^^^^u  night  warn'd  us  homeward,  tired  and  spent 

With  our  long  day  and  tedious  beggarv. 

These  were  my  manners,  this  my  way  of  life, 
Till  age  and  slow  disease  me  over  took, "^ 
And  sever'd  from  my  sightless  master's  side. 

4o  But  lest  the  grace  of  so  good  deeds  should  die, 

Through  tract  of  years  in  mute  oblivion  lost, 


A    COMPLAINT    OF    THE    DECAY    OF   BEGGARS     143 


This  slender  tomb  of  turf  hath  Irus  reared, 

Cheap  monument  of  no  ungrudging  hand, 

And  with  short  verse  inscribed  it,  to  attest, 

In  long  and  lasting  union  to  attest, 

The  virtues  of  the  Beggar  and  his  Dog.  5 

These  dim  eyes  have  in  vain  explored  for  some  months  past 
a  well-known  figure,  or  part  of  the  figure,  of  a  man,  who  nsed 
to  glide  his  comely  upper  half  over  the  pavements  of  London, 
wheeling  along  with  most  ingenious  celerity  upon  a  machine  of 
wood  ;  a  spectacle  to  natives,  to  foreigners,  and  to  children.  He  10 
was  of  a  robust  make,  Mitli  a  florid  sailor-like  complexion,  and 
his  head  was  bare  to  the  storm  and  sunshine.  He  was  a  natu- 
ral curiosity,  a  speculation  to  the  scientific,  a  prodigy  to  the 
simple.  The  infant  would  stare  at  the  mighty  man  brought 
down  to  his  own  level.  The  common  cripple  would  despise  his  15 
own  pusillanimity,  viewing  the  hale  stoutness,  and  hearty  heart, 
of  this  half-limbed  giant.  Few  but  must  have  noticed  him ; 
for  the  accident  which  brought  him  low,  took  place  during  the 
riots  of  1780,  and  he  has  been  a  groundling  so  long.  He  seemed 
earth-born,  an  Antaeus, °  and  to  suck  in  fresh  vigour  from  the  20 
soil  which  he  neighboured.  He  was  a  grand  fragment ;  as 
good  as  an  Elgin°  marble.  The  nature,  which  should  have  re- 
cruited his  reft  legs  and  thighs,  was  not  lost,  but  only  retired 
into  his  upper  parts,  and  he  was  half  a  Hercules.  I  heard  a 
tremendous  voice  thundering  and  growling,  as  before  an  earth-  25 
quake,  and  casting  down  my  eyes,  it  was  this  mandrake"  revil- 
ing a  steed  that  had  started  at  his  portentous  appearance.  He 
seemed  to  want  but  his  just  stature  to  have  rent  the  offending 
quadruped  in  shivers.  He  was  as  the  man-part  of  a  Centaur,'^ 
from  which  the  horse-half  had  been  cloven  in  some  dire  Lapi-  30 
thau°  controversy.  He  moved  on,  as  if  he  could  have  made 
shift  with  yet  half  of  the  body-portion  which  was  left  him. 
The  OS  suhlhne°  was  not  wanting ;  and  he  threw  out  yet  a  jolly 
countenance  upon  the  heavens.  Forty-and-two  years  had  he 
driven  this  out-of-door  trade,  and  now  that  his  hair  is  grizzled  3? 
in  the  service,  but  his  good  spirits  no  way  impaired,  because  he 
is  not  content  to  exchange  his  free  air  and  exercise  for  the  re- 
straints of  a  poor-house,  he  is  expiating  his  contumacy  in  one 
of  those  houses  (ironically  christened)  of  Correction. 


144  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

Was  a  daily  spectacle  like  this  to  be  deemed  a  nuisance, 
which  called  for  legal  interference  to  remove  ?  or  not  rather  a 
salutary  and  a  touching  object  to  the  passers-by  in  a  great  city? 
Among  her  shows,  her  museums,  and  supplies  for  ever-gaping 

5  curiosity  (and  what  else  but  an  accumulation  of  sights — end- 
less sights  —  is  a  great  city ;  or  for  what  else  is  it  desirable  ?) 
was  there  not  room  for  one  Lusus  (not  XaturcE,  indeed,  but) 
A  ccidentiimi'  ?  What  if  in  f orty-and-two-years  going  about,  tiie 
man  had  scraped  together  enough  to  give  a  portion  to  his  child 

10  (as  the  rumour  ran)  of  a  few  hundreds — whom  had  he  injured? 
—  whom  had  he  imposed  upon  ?  The  contributors  had  enjoyed 
t\\Q\v  sight  for  their  pennies.  What  if  after  being  exposed  all 
day  to  the  heats,  the  rains,  and  the  frosts  of  heaven  —  shuffling 
his  ungainly  trunk  along  in  an  elaborate  and  painful  motion 

15 — he  was  enabled  to  retire  at  night  to  enjoy  himself  at  a  club 
of  his  fellow  cripples  over  a  dish  of  hot  meat  and  vegetables,  as 
the  charge  was  gravely  brought  against  him  by  a  clergyman 
deposing  before  a  House  of  Commons'  Committee  —  was  this, 
or  was  his  truly  paternal  consideration,  which  (if  a  fact)  de- 

20  served  a  statue  rather  than  a  whipping-post,  and  is  inconsistent, 
at  least,  with  the  exaggeration  of  nocturnal  orgies  which  he  has 
been  slandered  with  —  a  reason  that  he  should  be  deprived  of 
his  chosen,  harmless,  nay,  edifying,  Avay  of  life,  and  be  com- 
mitted in  hoary  age  for  a  sturdy  vagabond?  — 

25  There  was  a  Yorick  once,  whom  it  would  not  have  shamed 
to  have  sate  down  at  the  cripples'  feast,  and  to  have  thrown  in 
his  benediction,  ay,  and  his  mite  too,  for  a  companionable  sym- 
bol.    "  Age,  thou' hast  lost  thy  breed."  — 

Half  of  these  stories  about  the  prodigious  fortunes  made  by 

30  begging  are  (I  verily  believe)  misers'  calumnies.  One  was 
much  talked  of  in  the  public  papers  some  time  since,  and  the 
usual  charitable  inferences  deduced.  A  clerk  in  the  Bank  was 
surprised  with  the  announcement  of  a  five-hundred-pound  legacy 
left  him  by  a  person  whose  name  he  was  a  stranger  to.    It  seems 

35  that  in  his  daily  morning  walks  from  Peckham  (or  some  vil- 
lage thereabouts)  where  he  lived,  to  his  office,  it  had  been  his 
practice  for  the  last  twenty  years  to  drop  his  halfpenny  duly 
into  the  hat  of  some  blind  Bartimeus,°  that  sate  begging  alnis 
by  the  wayside  in  the  Borough.     The  good  old  beggar  "recog- 


A    DISSERTATION-    UPON   ROAST   PIG  145 

nised  his  daily  benefactor  by  the  voice  only ;  and,  when  he  died, 
left  all  the  amassings  of  his  alms  (that  had  been  half  a  century 
perhaps  in  the  accumulating)  to  his  old  Bank  friend.  Was 
this  a  story  to  purse  up  people's  hearts,  and  pennies,  against 
giving  an  alms  to  the  blind  ?  —  or  not  rather  a  beautiful  moral  5 
of  well-directed  charity  on  the  one  part,  and  noble  gratitude 
upon  the  other? 

I  sometimes  wish  I  had  been  that  Bank  clerk. 

I  seem  to  remember  a  poor  old  grateful  kind  of  creature, 
blinking,  and  looking  up  with  his  no  eyes  in  the  sun  — 

Is  it  possible  I  could  have  steeled  my  purse  against  him  ? 

Perhaps  I  had  no  small  change. 

Reader,  do  not  be  frightened  at  the  hard  words  imposition, 
imposture  —  give,  and  ask  no  questions.  Cast  thy  bread  upon  the 
waters.  Some  have  unawares  (like  this  Bank  clerk)  enter- 
tained angels. 

Shut  not  thy  purse-strings  always  against  painted  distress. 
Act  a  charity  sometimes.  When  a  poor  creature  (outwardly 
and  visibly  such)  comes  before  thee,  do  not  stay  to  inquire 
whether  the  "seven  small  children,"  in  whose  name  he  im-20 
plores  thy  assistance,  have  a  veritable  existence.  Rake  not 
into  the  bowels  of  unwelcome  truth,  to  save  a  halfpenny.  It 
is  good  to  believe  him.  If  he  be  not  all  that  he  2:>retendeth,  give, 
and  under  a  personate  father  of  a  family,  think  (if  thou  pleas- 
est)  that  thou  hast  relieved  an  indigent  bachelor.  When  they  25 
come  w^ith  their  counterfeit  looks  and  mumping  tones,  think 
them  players.  You  pay  your  money  to  see  a  comedian  feign 
these  things,  which,  concerning  these  poor  people,  thou  canst 
not  certainly  tell  wiiether  they  are  feigned  or  not. 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG 

Mankind,  says  a  Chinese  manuscript,  which  my  friend  M.  30 
was  obliging  enough  to  read  and  explain  to  me,  for  the  first 
seventy  thousand  ages  ate  their  meat  raw^,  clawdng  or  biting  it 
from  the  living  animal,  just  as  they  do  in  Abyssinia  to  this 


146  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

day.  This  period  is  not  obscurely  hinted  at  by  their  great 
Confucius"  in  the  second  chapter  of  his  ^lundane  Mutations, 
where  he  designates  a  kind  of  golden  a^e  by  the  term  Cho- 
fang,  literally  the  Cooks'  Holiday.  The  manuscript  goes  on 
5  to  say,  that  the  art  of  roasting,  or  rather  broiling  (which  I 
take  to  be  the  elder  brother)  was  accidentally  discovered  in 
the  manner  following.  The  swine-herd,  Ho-ti,  having  gone 
out  into  the  woods  one  morning,  as  his  manner  was,  to  collect 
mast  for  his  hogs,  left  his  cottage  in  the  care  of  his  eldest  son 

10  Bo-bo,  a  great  lubberly  boy,  who  being  fond  of  playing  with 
fire,  as  younkers  of  his  age  commonly  are,  let  some  sparks 
escape  into  a  bundle  of  straw,  which  kindling  quickly,  spread 
the  conflagration  over  every  part  of  their  poor  mansio::,  till  it 
was   reduced  to  ashes.     Together  with    the    cottage  (a    sorry 

15  antedilm-ian  make-shift  of  a  building,  you  may  think  it),  what 
was  of  much  more  importance,  a  fine  litter  of  new-farrowed 
pigs,  no  less  than  nine  in  number,  perished.  China  pigs  have 
been  esteemed  a  luxury  all  over  the  East,  from  the  remotest 
periods  that  we  read  of.     Bo-bo  was  in  the  utmost  consterna- 

20  tion,  as  you  may  think,  not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  the  tene- 
ment, which  his  father  and  he  could  easily  build  up  again  wdth 
a  few  dry  branches,  and  the  labour  of  an  hour  or  two,  at  any 
time,  as  for  the  loss  of  the  pigs.  AYhile  he  was  thinking  what 
he  should  say  to  his  father,  and  wringing  his  hands  over  the 

25  smoking  remnants  of  one  of  those  untimely  sufferers,  an  odour 
assailed  his  nostrils,  unlike  any  scent  which  he  had  before 
experienced.  What  could  it  proceed  from? — not  from  the 
burnt  cottage  —  he  had  smelt  that  smell  before  —  indeed  this 
was  by  no   means  the    first   accident  of   the  kind  which   had 

30  occurred  through  the  negligence  of  this  unlucky  young  fire- 
brand. Much  less  did  it  resemble  that  of  any  "known  herb, 
weed,  or  flower.  A  premonitory  moistening  at  the  same  time 
overflowed  his  nether  lip.  He 'knew  not  what  to  think.  He 
next  stooped  down  to  feel  the  pig,  if  there  were  any  signs  of 

35  life  in  it.  He  burnt  his  fingers,  and  to  cool  them  he  applied 
them  in  his  booby  fashion  to  his  mouth.  Some  of  the  crumbs 
of  the  scorched  skin  had  come  away  with  his  fingers,  and  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life  (in  the  world's  life  indeed,  for  before 
him  no  man  had  known  it)  he  tasted  —  cracUimj  I     Again  he 


A    DISSERT ATIOX    UPON   ROAST   PIG  147. 

felt  and  fumbled  at  the  pig.  It  did  not  burn  him  so  much  now, 
still  he  licked  his  fingers  from  a  sort  of  habit.  The  truth  at 
length  broke  into  his  slow  understanding,  that  it  was  the  pig 
that  smelt  so,  and  the  pig  that  tasted  so  delicious ;  and  surren- 
dering himself  up  to  the  new-born  pleasure,  he  fell  to  tearing  up  5 
whole  handf  uls  of  the  scorched  skin  with  the  flesh  next  it,  and 
was  cramming  it  down  his  throat  in  his  beastly  fashion,  when  his 
sire  entered  amid  the  smoking  rafters,  armed  with  retributory 
cudgel,  and  finding  how  affairs  stood,  began  to  rain  blows  upon 
the  young  rogue's  shoulders,  as  thick  as  hail-stones,  which  Bo-bo  10 
heeded  not  any  more  than  if  they  had  been  flies.  The  tickling- 
pleasure,  which  he  experienced  in  his  lower  regions,  had  ren- 
dered him  quite  callous  to  any  inconveniences  he  might  feel  in 
those  remote  quarters.  His  father  might  lay  on,  but  he  could 
not  beat  him  from  his  pig,  till  he  had  fairly  made  an  end  of  it,  15 
when,  becoming  a  little  more  sensible  of  his  situation,  something- 
like  the  following  dialogue  ensued. 

"  You  graceless  whelp,  what  have  you  got  there  devouring  ? 
Is  it  not  enough  that  you  have  burnt  me  down  three  houses 
with  your  dog's  tricks,  and  be  hanged  to  you !  but  you  must  be  20 
eating  fire,  and  I  know  not  what  —  what  have  you  got  there,  I 
say?" 

•'  O  father,  the  pig,  the  pig !  do  come  and  taste  how  nice  the 
burnt  pig  eats." 

The  ears  of  Ho-ti  tingled  with  horror.     He  cursed  his  son,  25 
and  he  cursed  himself   that  ever  he  should   beget  a  son  that 
should  eat  burnt  pig. 

Bo-bo,  whose  scent  was  wonderfully  sharpened  since  morning, 
soon  raked  out  another  pig,  and  fairly  rending  it  asunder,  thrust 
the  lesser  half  by  main  force  into  the  fists  of  Ho-ti,  still  shout-  30 
ing  out,  "  Eat,  eat,  eat  the  burnt  pig,  father,  only  taste  —  O 
Lord!"  —  with  such-like  barbarous  ejaculations,  cramming  all 
the  while  as  if  he  would  choke. 

Ho-ti  trembled  in  every  joint  while  he  grasped  the  abominable 
thing,  wavering  whether  he  should  not  put  his  son  to  death  for  35 
an  unnatural  young  monster,  when  the  crackling  scorching  his 
fingers,  as  it  had  done  his  son's,  and  applying  the  same  remedy 
to  them,  he  in  his  turn  tasted  some  of  its  flavour,  which,  nuike 
what  sour  mouths  he  would  for  a  pretence,  proved  not  altogether 


148  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

displeasing  to  him.  In  conclusion  (for  the  manuscript  here  is  a 
little  tedious)  both  father  and  son  fairly  set  down  to  the  mess, 
and  never  left  off  till  they  had  despatched  all  that  remained  of 
the  litter. 

5  Bo-bo  was  strictly  enjoined  not  to  let  the  secret  escape,  for 
the  neighbours  would  certainly  have  stoned  them  for  a  couple 
of  abominable  "^Tetches,  who  could  think  of  improving  upon 
the  good  meat  which  God  had  sent  them.  Nevertheless,  strange 
stories  got  about.     It  was  observed  that  Ho-ti's  cottage  was 

10  burnt  down  now  more  frequently  than  ever.  Nothing  but  fires 
from  this  time  forward.  Some  would  break  out  in  broad  day, 
others  in  the  night-time.  As  often  as  the  sow  farrowed,  so  sure 
was  the  house  of  Ho-ti  to  be  in  a  blaze ;  and  Ho-ti  himself, 
which  was  the  more  remarkable,  instead  of  chastising  his  son, 

15  seemed  to  grow  more  indulgent  to  him  than  ever.  At  length 
they  were  watched,  the  terrible  mystery  discovered,  and  father 
and  son  summoned  to  take  their  trial  at  Pekin,  then  an  incon- 
siderable assize  town.  Evidence  was  given,  the  obnoxious  food 
itself  produced  in  court,  and  verdipt  about  to  be  pronouuced, 

20  when  the  foreman  of  the  jury  begged  that  some  of  the  burnt 
pig,  of  which  the  culprits  stood  accused,  might  be  handed  into 
the  box.  He  handled  it,  and  they  all  handled  it ;  and  burning 
their  fingers,  as  Bo-bo  and  his  father  had  done  before  them,  and 
nature  prompting  to  each  of  them  the  same  remedy,  against 

25  the  face  of  all  the  facts,  and  the  clearest  charge  which  judge 
had  ever  given, — to  the  surprise  of  the  whole  court,  townsfolk, 
strangers,  reporters,  and  all  present  — Mithout  leaving  the  box, 
or  any  manner  of  consultation  whatever,  thev  brought  in  a 
simultaneous  verdict  of  Not  Guilty. 

30  The  judge,  who  was  a  shrewd  fellow,  winked  at  the  manifest 
iniquity  of  the  decision;  and  when  the  court  was  dismissed, 
went  privily  and  bought  up  all  the  pigs  that  could  be  had  for 
love  or  money.  In  a  few  days  his  Lordship's  town-house  was 
observed  to  be  on  fire.     The  thing  took  wing,  and  now  there 

3.-)  was  nothing  to  be  seen  but  fires  in  every  direction.  Fuel  and 
pigs  grew  enormously  dear  all  over  the  district.  The  insurance- 
offices  one  and  all  shut  up  shop.  People  built  slighter  and 
slighter  every  day,  until  it  was  feared  that  the  very  science  of 
architecture  would  in  no  long  time  be  lost  to  the  world.     Thus 


A    DISSERTATION    UPON   HO  AST   FIG  149 

this  custom  of  firing  houses  continued,  till  in  process  of  time, 
says  my  manuscript,  a  sage  arose,  like  our  Locke,  who  made  a 
discovery  that  the  flesh  of  swine,  or  indeed  of  any  other  animal, 
might  be  cooked  {burnt,  as  they  called  it)  without  the  necessity 
of  consuming  a  whole  house  to  dress  it.  Then  first  began  the  5 
rude  form  of  a  gridiron.  Roasting  by  the  string,  or  spit,  came 
in  a  century  or  two  later,  I  forget  in  whose  dynasty.  By  such 
slow  degrees,  concludes  the  manuscript,  do  the  most  useful, 
and  seemingly  the  most  obvious,  arts  make  their  way  among 
mankind. 10 

Without  placing  too  implicit  faith  in  the  account  above 
given,  it  must  be  agreed  that  if  a  worthy  pretext  for  so  danger- 
ous an  experiment  as  setting  houses  on  fire  (especially  in  these 
days)  could  be  assigned  in  favour  of  any  culinary  object,  that 
pretext  and  excuse  might  be  found  in  roast  pig.  15 

Of  all  the  delicacies  in  the  whole  mundus  edibiUs°  I  will 
maintain  it  to  be  the  most  delicate  — princeps  obsoniorum° 

I  speak  not  of  your  grown  porkers  —  things  between  pig  and 
pork  —  those  hobbledehoys  —  but  a  young  and  tender  suckling 

—  under  a  moon  old  —  guiltless  as  yet  of  the  sty  —  with  no  20 
original  speck  of  the  amoi^  immunditicE,  the  hereditary  failing 
of  the  first  parent,  yet  manifest  —  his  voice  as  yet  not  broken, 
but  something  between  a  childish  treble  and  a  grumble  —  the 
mild  forerunner,  or  prceludium,  of  a  grunt. 

He  must  be  roasted.     I  am  not  ignorant  that  our  ancestors  ate  25 
them  seethed,  or  boiled  —  but  what  a  sacrifice  of  the  exterior 
tegument! 

There  is  no  flavour  comparable,  I  will  contend,  to  that  of  the 
crisp,  tawny,  well-watched,  not  over-roasted,  crackling,  as  it  is 
well  called  — the  very  teeth  are  invited  to  their  share  of  the  30 
pleasure  at  this  banquet  in  overcoming  the  coy,  brittle  resist- 
ance—  with  the  adhesive  oleaginous  —  O  call  it  not  fat!  but  an 
indefinable  sweetness  growing  up  to  it — the  tender  blossoming 
of  fat  —  fat  cropped  in  the  bud  —  taken  in  the  shoot  —  in  the 
first  innocence  —  the  cream  and  quintessence  of  the  child-pig's  35 
yet  pure  food  —  the  lean,  no  lean,  but  a  kind  of  animal  manna 

—  or,  rather,  fat  and  lean  (if  it  must  be  so)  so  blended  and 
running  into  each  other,  that  both  together  make  but  one 
ambrosian  result  or  common  substance. 


150  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

Behold   him  while   he   is  "doing"  — it    seemeth  rather   a 

refreshing  warmth,  than  a  scorching  heat,  that  he  is  so  passive 

to.     How  equably  he  twirleth  round  the  string!  —  Now  he  is 

just  done.    To  see  the  extreme  sensibility  of  that  tender  age  !  he 

5  hath  wept  out  his  pretty  eyes  —  radian  t  jellies  —  shooting  stars.  — 

See  him  in  the  dish,  his  second  cradle,  how  meek  he  lieth  !  — 

wouldst  thou  have  had  this  innocent  grow  up  to  the  grossness 

and  indocility  wdiich  too  often  accompany  maturer  swinehood  ? 

Ten   to   one  "^  he   would   have   proved   a   glutton,  a  sloven,  an 

10  obstinate,  disagreeable  animal  —  wallowing  in  all  manner  of 

filthy  conversation  —  from  these  sins  he   is   happily  snatched 

away  — 

Ere  sin  could  blight  or  sorrow  fade, 
Death  came  with  timely  care'^ — 

15  his  memory  is  odoriferous — no  clown  curseth,  while  his  stom- 
ach half  rejecteth,  the  rank  bacon  —  no  coalheaver  bolteth  him 
in  reeking  sausages — he  hath  a  fair  sepulchre  in  the  grateful 
stomach  of  the  judicious  epicure  —  and  for  such  a  tomb  might 
be  content  to  die. 

20  He  is  the  best  of  sapors.  Pine-apple  is  great.  She  is  in- 
deed almost  too  transcendent  —  a  delight,  if  not  sinful,  yet  so 
like  to  sinning,  that  really  a  tender-conscienced  person  would  do 
well  to  pause  —  too  ravishing  for  mortal  taste,  she  woundeth 
and  excoriateth  the  lips  that  approach  her  —  like  lovers'  kisses, 

25  she  biteth  —  she  is  a  pleasure  bordering  on  pain  from  the  fierce- 
ness and  insanity  of  her  rehsh  —  but  she  stoppeth  at  the  palate 
—  she  meddleth  not  with  the  appetite  —  and  the  coarsest 
hunger  might  barter  her  consistently  for  a  mutton-chop. 

Pig  —  let  me  speak  his  praise  —  is  no  less  provocative  of  the 

30  appetite  than  he  is  satisfactory  to  the  criticalness  of  the  cen- 
sorious palate.  The  strong  man  may  batten  on  him,  and  the 
w^eakling  refuseth  not  his  mild  juices. 

Unlike  to  mankind's  mixed  characters,  a  bundle  of  virtues 
and  vices,  inexplicably  intertwisted,  and  not  to  be  unravelled 

35  without  hazard,  he  is ^-r  good  throughout.  Xo  part  of  him  is 
better  or  worse  than  another.  He  helpeth,  as  far  as  his  little 
means  extend,  all  around.  He  is  the  least  envious  of  banquets. 
He  is  all  neighbours'  fare. 


A    DISSERTATION    UPON   ROAST   PIG  151 

I  am  one  of  those  who  freely  and  ungrudgingly  impart  a 
share  of  the  good  things  of  this  life  which  fall  to  their  lot  (few 
as  mine  are  in  this  kind)  to  a  friend.  I  protest  1  take  as  great 
an  interest  in  my  friend's  pleasures,  his  relishes,  and  proper 
satisfactions,  as  in  mine  own.  "Presents,"  I  often  say,  "en- 5 
dear  Absents."  Hares,  pheasants,  partridges,  snipes,  barn-door 
chickens  (those  "tame  villatic°  fowl  "),  capons,  plovers,  brawn, 
barrels  of  oysters,  I  dispense  as  freely  as  I  receive  them.  I  love 
to  taste  them,  as  it  were,  upon  the  tongue  of  my  friend.  But 
a  stop  must  be  put  somew^here.  One  would  not,  like  Lear,  10 
"  give  everything."  I  make  my  stand  upon  pig.  Methinks  it 
is  an  ingratitude  to  the  Giver  of  all  good  flavours  to  extra- 
domiciliate,  or  send  out  of  the  house,  slightingly,  (under  pre- 
text of  friendship,  or  I  know  not  what)  a  blessing  so  particularly 
adapted,  predestined,  I  may  say,  to  my  individual  palate.  —  It  15 
argues  an  insensibility. 

I  remember  a  touch  of  conscience  in  this  kind  at  school.  My 
good  old  aunt,  w4io  never  parted  from  me  at  the  end  of  a  holi- 
day without  stuffing  a  sweetmeat,  or  some  nice  thing,  into  my 
pocket,  had  dismissed  me  one  evening  with  a  smoking  plum- 20 
cake,  fresh  from  the  oven.  In  my  way  to  school  (it  was  over 
London  Bridge)  a  grey-headed  old  beggar  saluted  me  (I  have 
no  doubt,  at  this  time  of  day,  that  he  was  a  counterfeit).  I  had 
no  pence  to  console  him  with,  and  in  the  vanity  of  self-denial, 
and  the  very  coxcombry  of  charity,  school-boy  like,  I  made  him  25 
a  present  of — the  w^hole  cake  !  I  w^alked  on  a  little,  buoyed  up, 
as  one  is  on  such  occasions,  with  a  sweet  soothing  of  self-satis- 
faction; but,  before  I  had  got  to  the  end  of  the  bridge,  my 
better  feelings  returned,  and  I  burst  into  tears,  thinking  how 
ungrateful  I  had  been  to  my  good  aunt,  to  go  and  give  her  good  30 
gift  away  to  a  stranger  that  I  had  never  seen  before,  and  who 
might  be^  a  bad  man  for  aught  I  knew^ ;  and  then  I  thought  of 
the  pleasure  my  aunt  would  be  taking  in  thinking  that  I — I 
myself,  and  not  another  —  would  eat  her  nice  cake  — and  what 
should  I  say  to  her  the  next  time  I  saw^  her — how  naughty  135 
was  to  part  with  her  pretty  present !  —  and  the  odour  of  that 
spicy  cake  came  back  upon  my  recollection,  and  the  pleasure 
and  the  curiosity  I  had  taken  in  seeing  her  make  it,  and  her 
joy  when  she  sent  it  to  the  oven,  and  how  disappointed  she 


152  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

would  feel  that  I  had  never  had  a  bit  of  it  in  my  mouth  at  last 
—  and  I  blamed  my  impertinent  spirit  of  alms-giving,  and  out- 
of-place  hypocrisy  of  goodness;  and  above  all  I  wished  never 
to  see  the  face  again  of  that  insidious,  good-for-nothing,  old 

5  grey  impostor. 

Our  ancestors  were  nice  in  their  method  of  sacrificing  these 
tender  victims.  We  read  of  pigs  whipt  to  death  with  some- 
thing of  a  shock,  as  we  hear  of  any  other  obsolete  custom.  The 
age  of  discipline  is  gone  by,  or  it  would  be  curious  to  inquire 

10  (in  a  philosophical  light  merely)  what  eifect  this  process  might 
have  towards  intenerating  and  dulcifying  a  substance,  naturally 
so  mild  and  dulcet  as  the  flesh  of  young  pigs.  It  looks  like 
refining  a  violet.  Yet  we  should  be  cautious,  while  we  condemn 
the  inhumanity,  how  we  censure  the  wisdom  of  the  practice.    It 

15  might  impart  a  gusto.  — • 

I  remember  an  h}^5othesis,  argued  upon  by  the  young  students, 
when  I  was  at  St.  Omer's,  and  maintained  with  much  learning 
and  pleasantry  on  both  sides,  ''  Whether,  supposing  that  the 
flavour  of  a  pig  who  obtained  his  death  by  whipping  (^per  fla- 

20  f/ellat ion  em  extremam)  superadded  a  pleasure  upon  the  palate  of 
a  man  more  intense  than  any  possible  suffering  we  can  conceive 
in  the  animal,  is  man  justified  in  using  that  method  of  putting 
the  animal  to  death  ?  "     I  forget  the  decision. 

His  sauce   should  be  considered.     Decidedly,  a  few  bread 

25  crumbs,  done  up  with  his  liver  and  brains,  and  a  dash  of  mild 
sage.  But  banish,  dear  Mrs.  Cook,  I  beseech  you,  the  whole 
onion  tribe.  Barbecue"  your  whole  hogs  to  your  palate,  steep 
them  ill  shalots,  stuff  them  out  with  plantations  of  the  rank 
and   guilty  garlic;    you   cannot   poison   them,  or  make  them 

30  stronger  than  they  are  — but  consider,  he  is  a  weakling  — a 
flower. 


A  BACHELOR'S   COMPLAINT   OF    THE    BEHAVIOUR 
OF   MARRIED  PEOPLE 

_    As  a  single  man,  I  have  spent  a  good  deal  of  mv  time  in  not- 
ing down  the  infirmities  of  Married  People,  to  coneole  myself 


A    BACHELOR'S    COMPLAIXT  153 

for  those  superior  pleasures,  which  they  tell  me  I  have  lost  by 
remaining  as  I  am. 

I  cannot  say  that  the  quarrels  of  men  and  their  wives  ever 
made  any  great  impression  upon  me,  or  had  much  tendency  to 
strengthen  me  in  those  anti-social  resolutions  which  I  took  up  5 
long  ago  upon  more  substantial  considerations.  What  oftenest 
offends  me  at  the  houses  of  married  persons  where  I  visit,  is  an  ' 
error  of  quite  a  different  description  ;  —  it  is  that  they  are  too 
loving. 

Not  too  loving  neither :  that  does  not  explain  my  meaning.  10 
Besides,  why  should  that  offend  me?     The  very  act  of  separat- 
ing themselves  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  to  have  the  fuller 
enjoyment  of  each  other's  society,  implies  that  they  prefer  one 
another  to  all  the  M^orld. 

But  what  I  complain  of  is,  that  they  carry  this  preference  so  15 
undisguisedly,  they  perk  it  up  in  the  faces  of  us  single  people 
so  shamelessly,  you  cannot  be  in  their  company  a  moment  with- 
out being  made  to  feel,  by  some  indirect  hint  or  open  avowal, 
that  you  are  not  the  object  of  this  preference.     Now  there  are 
some  things  which  give  no  offence,  while  implied  or  taken  for  20 
granted  merely;  but  expressed,  there  is  much  offence  in  them. 
If  a  man  were  to  accost  the  first  homely-featured  or  plain- 
dressed  young  woman  of  his  acquaintance,  and  tell  her  bluntly, 
that  she  was  not    handsome  or  rich  enough  for  him,  and  he 
could  not  marry  her,  he  would  deserve  to  be  kicked  for  his  ill-  25 
manners ;  yet  no  less  is  implied  in  the  fact,  that  having  access 
and  opportunity  of  putting  the  question  to  her,  he  has  never 
yet  thought  fit  to  do  it.     The  young  woman  understands  this 
as  clearly  as  if  it  were  put  into  words ;  but  no  reasonable  young- 
woman  would  think  of  making  this  the  ground  of  a  quarrel.  30 
Just  as  little  right  have  a  married  couple  to  tell  me  by  speeches, 
and  looks  that  are  scarce  less  plain  than  speeches,  that  I  am  not 
the  happy  man,  — the  lady's  choice.     It  is  enough  that  I  knoAV 
I  am  not :  I  do  not  want  this  perpetual  reminding. 

The  display  of  superior  knowledge  or  riches  may  be  made  35 
sufficiently  mortifying,  but  these  admit  of  a  palliative.     The 
knowledge  which  is  brought  out  to  insult  me,  may  accidentally 
improve  me;  and  in  the  rich  man's  houses  and  pictures, — his 
parks  and  gardens,  I  have  a  temporary  usufruct  at  least.     But 


154  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

the  display  of  married  happiness  has  none  of  these  palliatives: 
it  is  throughout  jmre,  unrecompensed,  nnqualified  insult. 

Marriage  by  its  best  title  is  a  monopoly,  and  not  of  the  least 
invidious  sort.  It  is  the  cunning  of  most  possessors  of  any 
5  exclusive  privilege  to  keep  their  advantage  as  much  out  of 
siglit  as  possible,  that  their  less  favoured  neighbours,  seeing 
little  of  the  benefit,  may  the  less  be  disposed  to  question  the 
right.  But  these  married  monopolists  thrust  the  most  obnoxious 
part  of  their  patent  into  our  faces. 

10  Nothing  is  to  me  more  distasteful  than  that  entire  complacency 
and  satisfaction  which  beam  in  the  countenances  of  a  new-mar- 
ried couple,  —  in  that  of  the  lady  particularly :  it  tells  you,  that 
her  lot  is  disposed  of  in  this  world  :  that  you  can  have  no  hopes 
of  her.     It  is  true,  I  have  none :  nor  wishes  either,  perhaps : 

15  but  this  is  one  of  those  truths  which  ought,  as  I  said  before,  to 
be  taken  for  granted,  not  expressed. 

The  excessive  airs  which  those  people  give  themselves, 
founded  on  the  ignorance  of  us  unmarried  people,  would  be 
more  offensive   if   they  were   less   irrational.     We  will   allow 

•JO  them  to  understand  the  mysteries  belonging  to  their  own  craft 
better  than  we  who  have  not  had  the  happiness  to  be  made 
free  of  the  company :  but  their  arrogance  is  not  content  within 
these  limits.  If  a  single  person  presume  to  offer  his  opinion  in 
their  presence,  though  upon  the  most  indifferent  subject,  he  is 

25  immediately  silenced  as  an  incompetent  person.  Xay,  a  young 
married  lady  of  my  acquaintance,  who,  the  best  of  the  jest  was, 
had  iiot  changed  her  condition  above  a  fortnight  before,  in  a 
(juestion  on  which  I  had  the  misfortune  to  differ  from  her, 
respecting   the   properest   mode   of   breeding    oysters    for    the 

30  London  market,  had  the  assurance  to  ask  with  a  sneer,  how- 
such  an  old  Bachelor  as  I  could  pretend  to  know  anything 
about  such  matters ! 

But  what  I  have  spoken  of  hitherto  is  nothing  to  the  airs 
which  these  creatures  give  themselves  when  thev  come,  as  thev 

:k-.  generally  do.  to  have  children.  When  I  consider  how  little  of 
a  rarity  children  are,  —  that  every  street  and  blind  alley  swarms 
with  them.  — that  the  poorest  people  commonlv  have  them  in 
most  abundance,  — that  there  are  few  marriag^es  that  are  not 
blest  with  at  least  one  of  these  bargains,  —  how  often  they  turn 


A    BACHELOR'S    COMPLAINT  155 

out  ill,  and  defeat  the  fond  hopes  of  their  parents,  taking  to 
vicious  courses,  which  end  in  poverty,  disgrace,  the  gallows,  etc. 
—  I  cannot  for  my  life  tell  what  cause  for  pride  there  can  pos- 
sibly be  in  having  them.  If  they  were  young  phoenixes,°  indeed, 
that  were  born  but  one  in  a  year,  there  might  be  a  pretext.  5 
But  when  they  are  so  common 

I  do  not  advert  to  the  insolent  merit  which  they  assume  with 
their  husbands  on  these   occasions.     Let   them    look   to   that. 
But  why  we,  who  are  not  their  natural-born  subjects,  should  be 
expected  to  bring  our  spices,  myrrh,  and  incense,  —  our  tribute  10 
and  homage  of  admiration,  —  I  do  not  see. 

"  Like  as  the  arrows  in  the  hand  of  the  giant,  even  so  are  the 
young  children ;  "  so  says  the  excellent  office  in  our  Prayer- 
book  appointed  for  the  churching  of  women.  "Happy  is  the 
man  that  hath  his  quiver  full  of  them."  So  say  I ;  but  then  don't  15 
let  him  discharge  his  quiver  upon  us  that  are  weaponless;  — 
let  them  be  arrows,  but  not  to  gall  and  stick  us.  I  have 
generally  observed  that  these  arrows  are  double-headed :  they 
have  two  forks,  to  be  sure  to  hit  with  one  or  the  other.  As  for 
instance,  where  you  come  into  a  house  which  is  full  of  children,  20 
if  you  happen  to  take  no  notice  of  them  (you  are  thinking  of 
something  else,  perhaps,  and  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  their  innocent 
caresses),  you  are  set  down  as  un tractable,  morose,  a  hater  of 
children.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  find  them  more  than 
usually  engaging,  —  if  you  are  taken  with  their  pretty  man-  25 
ners,  and  set  about  in  earnest  to  romp  and  play  with  them,  — 
some  pretext  or  other  is  sure  to  be  found  for  sending  them  out 

of  the  room ;  they  are  too  noisy  or  boisterous,  or  Mr. does 

not  like  children.     With  one  or  other  of  these  forks  the  arrow 
is  sure  to  hit  you.  ,30 

I  could  forgive  their  jealousy,  and  dispense  with  toying  with 
their  brats,  if  it  gives  them  any  pain  ;  but  I  think  it  unreason- 
able to  be  called  upon  to  love  them,  where  I  see  no  occasion, — 
to  love  a  whole  family,  perhaps  eight,  nine,  or  ten,  indiscrimi- 
nately, —  to  love  all  the  pretty  clears,  because  children  are  so  35 
engaging ! 

I  know  there  is  a  proverb,  "  Love  me,  love  my  dog°  :  "  that  is 
not  always  so  very  practicable,  particularly  if  the  dog  be  set 
upon  you  to  tease  you  or  snap  at  you  in  sport.     But  a  dog,  or  a 


156  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

lesser  thing  —  any  inanimate  substance,  as  a  keepsake,  a  watch 
or  a  ring,  a  tree,  or  the  place  where  we  last  parted  when  my 
friend  went  away  upon  a  long  absence,  I  can  make  shift  to  love, 
because  1  love  liim,  and  anything  that  reminds  me   of  him  : 

a  provided  it  be  in  its  nature  indifferent,  and  apt  to  receive  what- 
ever hue  fancy  can  give  it.  But  children  have  a  real  character, 
and  an  essential  being  of  themselves:  they  are  amiable  or 
unamiable  per  se ;  I  must  love  or  hate  them  as  I  see  cause  for 
either  in  their  qualities.     A  child's  nature  is  too  serious  a  thing 

10  to  admit  of  its  being  regarded  as  a  mere  appendage  to  another 
being,  and  to  be  loved  or  hated  accordingly  ;  they  stand  with 
me  upon  their  own  stock,  as  much   as   men   and  women   do. 

0  !  but  you  will  say.  sure  it  is  an  attractive  age,  —  there  is 
something  in  the  tender  years  of  infancy  that  of  itself  charms 

15  us.     That  is  the  very  reason  why  I  am  more  nice  about  them. 

1  know  that  a  sweet  child  is  the  sweetest  thing  in  nature,  not 
even  excepting  the  delicate  creatures  which  bear  them ;  but  the 
prettier  the  kind  of  a  thing  is,  the  more  desirable  it  is  that  it 
should  be  pretty  of  its  kind.     One  daisy  differs  not  much  from 

20  another  in  glory;  but  a  violet  should  look  and  smell  the 
daintiest.  —  I  was  always  rather  squeamish  in  my  women  and 
children. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst :  one  must  be  admitted  into  their 
familiarity  at  least,  before  they  can  complain  of  inattention. 

25  It  implies  visits,  and  some  kind  of  intercourse.  But  if  the 
husband  be  a  man  with  whom  you  have  lived  on  a  friendly  foot- 
ing before  marriage,  —  if  you  did  not  come  in  on  the  wife's 
side,  —  if  you  did  not  sneak  into  the  house  in  her  train,  but 
were   an   old   friend   in   fast  habits  of  intimacy  before  their 

30  courtship  was  so  much  as  thought  on,  — look  about  you  —  your 
tenure  is  precarious  —  before  a  twelvemonth  shall  roll  over 
your  head,  you  shall  find  your  old  friend  gradually  grow 
cool  and  altered  towards  you,' and  at  last  seek  opportunities  of 
breaking  with   you.     I   have   scarce  a  married  friend  of  my 

35  acquaintance,  upon  whose  firm  faith  I  can  rely,  whose  friend- 
ship did  not  commence  after  the  period  of  his  marriage.  With 
some  limitations  they  can  endure  that :  but  that  the  good  man 
should  have  dared  to  enter  into  a  solemn  league  of  friendship 
in  which  they  were  not  consulted,  though  it"  happened  before 


A    BACHELOR'S    COMPLAINT  157 

they  knew  him,  —  before  they  that  are  now  man  and  wife  ever 
met,  —  this  is  intolerable  to  them.  Every  long  friendship, 
every  old  authentic  intimacy,  must  be  brought  into  their  office 
to  be  new  stamped  with  their  currency,  as  a  sovereign  Prince 
calls  in  the  good  old  money  that  was  coined  in  some  reign  be-  5 
fore  he  was  born  or  thought  of,  to  be  new  marked  and  minted 
with  the  stamp  of  his  authority,  before  he  will  let  it  pass 
current  in  the  world.  You  may  guess  what  luck  generally 
befalls  such  a  rusty  piece  of  metal  as  I  am  in  these  new  mint- 
ings.  10 

Innumerable  are  the  ways  which  they  take  to  insult  and 
worm  you  out  of  their  husband's  confidence.  Laughing  at  all 
you  say  witli  a  kind  of  wonder,  as  if  you  were  a  queer  kind  of 
fellow  that  said  good  things,  hut  an  oddity,  is  one  of  the  ways ; 
—  they  have  a  particular  kind  of  stare  for  the  purpose ;  —  till  at  15 
last  the  husband,  who  used  to  defer  to  your  judgment,  and  would 
pass  over  some  excrescences  of  understanding  and  manner  for 
the  sake  of  a  general  vein  of  observation  (not  quite  vulgar) 
which  he  perceived  in  you,  begins  to  suspect  whether  you  are 
not  altogether  a  humorist,  —  a  fellow  well  enough  to  have  20 
consorted  with  in  his  bachelor  days,  but  not  quite  so  proper  to 
be  introduced  to  ladies.  This  maybe  called  the  staring  way; 
and  is  that  which  has  oftenest  been  put  in  practice  against  me. 

Then  there  is  the  exaggerating  way,  or  the  way  of  irony ; 
that  is,  where  they  find  you  an  object  of  especial  regard  with  25 
their  husband,  who  is  not  so  easily  to  be  shaken  from  the  last- 
ing   attachment   founded   on  esteem  which  he  has  conceived 
towards  you,  by  never-qualified  exaggerations  to  cry  up  all  that 
you  say  or  do,  till  the  good  man,  who  understands  well  enough 
that  it  is  all  done  in  compliment  to  him,  grows  weary  of  the  30 
debt  of  gratitude  which  is  due  to  so  much  candour,  and   by 
relaxing  a  little  on  his  part,  and  taking  down  a  peg  or  two  in 
his  enthusiasm,  sinks  at  length  to  the  kindly  level  of  moderate 
esteem,  —  that  "  decent   affection    and   complacent  kindness  " 
towards  you,  where  she  herself  can  join  in  sympathy  with  him  35 
without  much  stretch  and  violence  to  her  sincerity. 

Another  way  (for  the  ways  they  have  to  accomplish  so  de- 
sirable a  purpose  are  infinite)  is,  with  a  kind  of  innocent 
simplicity,  continually  to  mistake  what  it  was  which  first  made 


158  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

their  luisband  fond  of  you.  If  an  esteem  for  something  excel- 
lent in  Tour  moral  character  ^as  that  which  riveted  the  chain 
which  she  is  to  break,  upon  any  imaginary  discovery  of  a  want 
of  poignancy  in  your  conversation,  she  will  cry,  '•  I  thought,  my 

5  dear,  you  described  your  friend,  Mr. .  as  a  great  wit  I  " 

If,  on 'the  other  hand"^  it  was  for  some  supposed  charm  in  your 
conversation  that  he  first  grew  to  like  you.  and  was  content 
for  this  to  overlook  some  trifling  irregularities  in  your  moral 
deportment,  upon  the  first  notice  of  any  of  these  she  as  readily 

10  exclaims,  •'  This,  my  dear,  is  your  good  ]\Ir. 1  "     One 

good  lady  whom  I  took  the  liberty  of  expostulating  with  for 
not  showing  me  quite  so  much  respect  as  I  thought  due  to  her 
husband's  old  friend,  had  the  candour  to  confess  to  me  that 
she  had  often  heard  Mr. speak  of  me  before  marriage. 

15  and  that  she  had  conceived  a  great  desire  to  be  acquainted  with 
me.  but  that  the  sight  of  me  had  very  much  disappointed  her 
expectations ;  for,  from  her  husband's  representations  of  me, 
she  had  formed  a  notion  that  she  was  to  see  a  fine,  taU,  officer- 
like looking  man  (I  use  her  very  words),  the  very  reverse  of 

2f»  wliich  proved  to  be  the  truth.  This  was  candid ;  and  I  htrd  the 
civility  not  to  ask  her  in  return,  how  she  came  to  pitch  upon  a 
standard  of  personal  accomplishments  for  her  husband's  friends 
which  differed  so  much  from  his  own ;  for  my  friend's  dimen- 
sions as  near  as  possible  approximate  to  mine ;  he  standing  five 

25  feet  five  in  his  shoes,  in  which  I  have  tlie  advantage  of  him  by 
about  half  an  inch ;  and  he  no  more  than  myself  exhibitinu 
any  indications  of  a  martial  character  in  his  air  or  countenance. 
These  are  some  of  the  mortifications  which  I  have  encoun- 
tered in  the  absurd  attempt  to  visit  at  their  houses.     To  enu- 

30  merate  them  all  would  be  a  vain  endeavour ;  I  shall  therefore 
just  glance  at  the  very  common  impropriety  of  which  married 
ladiesare  guilty.  —  of  treating  us  as  if  we  were  their  husband>. 
and  vice  versa.  I  mean,  when  they  use  us  with  familiarity,  and 
their  husbands  with   ceremony.   "  Testacea,  for    instance.'  kept 

;.",  me  the  other  night  two  or  three  hours  beyond  mv  usual  time 

of   supping,   while    she  was  fretting   because    Mr. did 

not  come  home,  till  the  oysters  were  all  spoiled,  rather  than 
she  would  be  guilty  of  the'impoliteness  of  touching  one  in  his 
absence.     This  was  reversing 'the  point  of  good   manners  :  for 


ON   SOME    OF    THE    OLD    ACTORS  159 

ceremony  is  au  invention  to  take  off  the  uneasy  feeling  which 
we  derive  from  knowing  om-selves  to  be  less  the  object  of  love 
and  esteem  with  a  fellow-creature  than  some  other  person  is. 
It  endeavours  to  make  up,  by  superior  attentions  in  little  points, 
for  that  invidious  preference  which  it  is  forced  to  deny  in  the  5 
greater.  Had  Testacea  kept  the  oysters  back  for  me,  and  with- 
stood her  husband's  importunities  to  go  to  supper,  she  would 
have  acted  according  to  the  strict  rules  of  propriety.  I  know 
no  ceremony  that  ladies  are  bound  to  observe  to  their  hus- 
bands, beyond  the  point  of  a  modest  behaviour  and  decorum:  10 
therefore  I  must  protest  against  the  vicarious  gluttony  of  Cera- 
sia,  who  at  her  own  table  sent  away  a  dish  of  Morellas,°  which 
I  was  applying  to  with  great  goodwill,  to  her  husband  at  the 
other  end  of  the  table,  and  recommended  a  plate  of  less  extraor- 
dinary gooseberries   to   my  unwedded   palate   in    their    stead.  15 

Neither  can  I  excuse  the  wanton  affront  of 

But  I  am  M^eary  of  stringing  up  all  my  married  acquaintance 
by  Roman  denominations.  Let  them  amend  and  change  their 
manners,  or  I  promise  to  record  the  full-length  English  of  their 
nameS;  to  the  terror  of  all  such  desperate  offenders  in  future.      20 


ON"  SOME   OF   THE   OLD   ACTORS 

The  casual  sight  of  an  old  Play  Bill,  which  I  picked  up  the 
other  day  —  I  know  not  by  what  chance  it  was  preserved  so 
long — tempts  me  to  call  to  mind  a  few  of  the  Players,  who 
make  the  principal  figure  in  it.  It  presents  the  cast  of  parts 
in  the  Twelfth-Night,  at  the  old  Drury-lane  Theatre  two-and-  25 
thirty  years  ago.  There  is  something  very  touching  in  these 
old  remembrances.  They  make  us  think  how  we  07>ce  used  to 
read  a  Play  Bill  —  not,  as  now  peradventure,  singling  out  a 
favourite  performer,  and  casting  a  negligent  eye  over  the  rest; 
but  spelling  out  every  name,  down  to  the  very  mutes  and  ser-30 
vants  of  the  scene;  when  it  was  a  matter  of  no  small  moment 
to  us  whether  Whitfield,  or  Packer,  took  the  part  of  Fabian  ; 
when  Benson,  and  Burton,   and  Phillimore  —  names  of   small 


1(30  THE    ESS  A  YS    OF   ELI  A 

account  —  had  an  importance,  beyond  what  we  can  be  con- 
tent to  attribute  now  to  the  time's  best  actors.  —  "  Orsino,  by 
Mr.  Barrymore."  —  What  a  full  Shakspearian  sound  it  carries ! 
how  fresh  to  memory  arise  the  image  and  the  manner  of  the 

5  gentle  actor ! 

Those  who  have  only  seen  Mrs.  Jordan  within  the  last  ten  or 
fifteen  years,  can  have  no  adequate  notion  of  her  performance 
of  such  parts  as  Ophelia;  Helena,  in  All's  Well  that  Ends 
AVell ;  and  Viola,  in  this  play.     Her  voice  had  latterly  acquired 

10  a  coarseness,  which  suited  well  enough  wdth  her  Nells  and 
Hoydens,  but  in  those  days  it  sank,  with  her  steady,  melting 
eye,  into  the  heart.  Her  joyous  parts  —  in  which  her  memory 
now  chiefly  lives  —  in  her  youth  were  outdone  by  her  plaintive 
ones.     There  is  no  giving  an  account  how  she  delivered  the  dis- 

ISguised  story  of  her  love  for  Orsino.  It  was  no  set  speech,  that 
she  had  foreseen,  so  as  to  weave  it  into  an  harmonious  period, 
line  necessarily  following  line,  to  make  up  the  music  —  yet  I 
have  heard  it  so  spoken,  or  rather  read,  not  w^ithout  its  grace 
and  beauty  —  but,  when  she  had  declared  her  sister's  history  to 

20  be  a  "  blank,"  and  that  she  "  never  told  her  love,"  there  was  a 
pause,  as  if  the  story  had  ended  —  and  then  the  image  of  the 
''worm  in  the  bud"  came  up  as  a  new  suggestion  —  and  the 
heightened  image  of  '•  Patience  "  still  followed  after  tliat  as  by 
some  growing  (and  not  mechanical)  process,  thought  springing 

25  up  after  thought,  I  would  almost  say,  as  they  were  watered  by 
her  tears.     So  in  those  fine  lines 

Write  loyal  cantons  of  contemned  love  — 
Halloo  5  oui-  name  to  the  reverberate  hills  — 

there  was  no  preparation  made  in  the  foregoing  image  for  that 
IX)  which  was  to  follow.     She  used  no  rhetoric  inher  passion  ;  or 

it  was  nature's   own  rhetoric,  most   legitimate   then,  when    it 

seemed  altogether  wdthout  rule  or  law. 

Mrs.   Powel    (now   Mrs.  Renard),  then   in  the  pride  of  her 

beauty,  made  an  admirable  Olivia.     She  was  particularly  excel- 
1)5  lent  in  her  unbending  scenes  in  conversation  with  the  Clown.     I 

have  seen  some  Olivias  —  and  those  very  sensible  actresses  too 

—  who  in  these  interlocutions  have  seemed  to  set  their  wits  at 


ON   SOME    OF    THE    OLD    ACTORS  161 

the  jester,  and  to  vie  conceits  with  him  in  downright  einulatior-. 
But  she  used  him  for  her  sport,  like  what  he  was,  to  trifle  a 
leisure  sentence  or  two  with,  and  then  to  be  dismissed,  and  she 
to  be  the  Great  Lady  still.  She  touched  the  imperious  fantastic 
humour  of  the  character  with  nicety.  Her  fine  spacious  person  ? 
filled  the  scene. 

The  part  of  Malvolio  has,  in  my  judgment,  been  so  often  mis- 
understood, and  the  general  merits  of  the  actor,  who  then  played 
it,  so  unduly  apjireciated,  that  I  shall  hope  for  pardon,  if  I  am 
a  little  prolix  upon  these  points.  10 

Of  all  the  actors  who  flourished  in  my  time  —  a  melancholy 
phrase  if  taken  aright.  Reader  —  Bensley  had  most  of  the  swell 
of  soul,  was  greatest  in  the  delivery  of  heroic  conceptions,  the 
emotions  consequent  upon  the  presentment  of  a  great  idea  to 
the  fancy.  He  had  the  true  poetical  enthusiasm  —  the  rarest  15 
faculty  among  players.  None  that  I  remember  possessed  even 
a  portion  of  that  fine  madness  which  he  threw  out  in  Hotspur's 
famous  rant  about  glory,°  or  the  transports  of  the  Venetian  in- 
cendiary °  at  the  vision  of  the  fired  city.  His  voice  had  the  dis- 
sonance, and  at  times  the  inspiriting  effect  of  the  trumpet.  His20 
gait  was  uncouth  and  stiff,  but  no  way  embarrassed  by  affec- 
tation ;  and  the  thorough-bred  gentleman  was  uppermost  in 
every  movement.  He  seized  the  moment  of  passion  with  the 
greatest  truth  ;  like  a  faithful  clock,  never  striking  before  the 
time  ;  never  anticipating  or  leading  you  to  anticipate.  He  w^as  25 
totally  destitute  of  trick  and  artifice.  He  seemed  come  upon 
the. stage  to  do  the  poet's  message  simply,  and  he  did  it  with  as 
genuine  fidelity  as  the  nuncios  in  Homer  deliver  the  errands  of 
the  gods.  He  let  the  passion  or  the  sentiment  do  its  own  work 
without  prop  or  bolstering.  He  would  have  scorned  to  mounte-  30 
bank  it ;  and  betrayed  none  of  that  cleverness  which  is  the  bane 
of  serious  acting.  For  this  reason,  his  Iago°  was  the  only  en- 
durable one  which  I  remember  to  have  seen.  No  spectator 
from  his  action  could  divine  more  of  his  artifice  than  Othello 
was  supposed  to  do.  His  confessions  in  soliloquy  alone  put  you  35 
in  possession  of  the  mystery.  There  were  no  by-intimations  to 
make  the  audience  fancy  their  own  discernment  so  much  greater 
than  that  of  the  Moor  —  who  commonly  stands  like  a  great  help- 
less mark  set  up  for  mine  Ancient,  and  a  quantity  of  barren 

M 


162  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

spectators,  to  shoot  their  bolts°  at.  The  lago  of  Benslev  did 
not  go  to  work  so  grossly.  There  was  a  triumphant  tone  about 
the  character,  natural  to  a  general  consciousness  of  power ;  but 
none  of  that  petty  vanity  which  chuckles  and  cannot  contain  it- 
5  self  upon  any  little  successful  stroke  of  its  knavery  —  as  is  com- 
mon with  your  small  villains,  and  green  probationers  in  mischief. 
It  did  not  clap  or  crow  befoi-e  its  time.  It  was  not  a  man  set- 
ting his  wits  at  a  child,  and  winking  all  the  while  at  other  chil- 
dren, who  are  mightily  pleased  at  being  let  into  the  secret;  but 

10  a  consummate  villain  entrapping  a  noble  nature  into  toils 
against  which  no  discernment  was  available,  where  the  manner 
was  as  fathomless  as  the  purpose  seemed  dark,  and  without 
motive.  The  part  of  Malvolio,  in  the  Twelfth  Night,  was  per- 
formed by  Bensley  with  a  richness  and  a  dignity,  of  which  (to 

15  judge  from  some  recent  castings  of  that  character)  the  very 
tradition  must  be  worn  out  from  the  stage.  No  manager  In 
those  days  would  have  dreamed  of  giving  it  to  Mr.  Baddely, 
or  Mr.  Parsons;  when  Bensley  was  occasionally  absent  from 
the  theatre,  John  Kemble  thought  it  no  derogation  to  succeed 

20  to  the  part.  Malvolio  is  not  essentially  ludicrous.  He  becomes 
comic  but  by  accident.  He  is  cold,  austere,  repelling ;  but  dig- 
nified, consistent,  and,  for  what  appears,  rather  of  an  over- 
stretched morality.  Maria  describes  him  as  a  sort  of  Puritan  ; 
and  he  might  have  worn  his  gold  chain  with  honour  in  one  of  our 

2")  old  roundhead  families,  in  the  service  of  a  Lambert,  or  a  Lady 
Fairfax.  But  his  morality  and  his  manners  are  misplaced  in 
Illyria.  He  is  opposed  to  the  proper  levities,  of  the  piece,  and 
falls  in  the  unequal  contest.  Still  his  pride,  or  his  gravity, 
(call  it  which  you  will),  is  inherent,  and  native  to  the  man,  not 

30  mock  or  affected,  which  latter  only  are  the  fit  objects  to  excite 
laughter.  His  quality  is  at  the  best  unlovely,  but  neither  buf- 
foon nor  contemptible.  His  bearing  is  lofty,  a  little  above  his 
station,  but  probably  not  much  above  his  deserts.  We  see  no 
reason  why  he  should  not  have  been  brave,  honourable,  accom- 

Soplished.  His  careless  committal  of  the  ring  to  the  ground 
(which  he  was  commissioned  to  restore  to  Cesario),  bespeaks  a 
generosity  of  birth  and  feeling.^  His  dialect  on  all  occasions  is 
that  of  a  gentleman,  and  a  man  of  education.  We  must  not 
confound  him  with  the  eternal  old,  low  steward  of  comedy.    He  is 


ON   SOME    OF    THE    OLD    ACTORS  163 

-master  of  the  household  to  a  great  Princess  ;  a  dignity  probably 
conferred  upon  him  for  other  respects  than  age  or  length  of 
service.  Olivia,  at  the  first  indication  of  his  supposed  madness, 
declares  that  she  "would  not  have  him  miscarry  for  half  of  her 
dowry."  Does  this  look  as  if  the  character  was  meant  to  ap-5 
pear  little  or  insignificant?  Once,  indeed,  she  accuses  him  to 
his  face  —  of  what?  —  of  being  "sick  of  self-love,"  —  but  with 
a  gentleness  and  considerateness  which  could  not  have  been,  if 
she  had  not  thought  that  this  particular  infirmity  shaded  some 
virtues.  His  rebuke  to  the  knight  and  his  sottish  revellers,  is  10 
sensible  and  spirited ;  and  when  we  take  into  consideration  the 
unprotected  condition  of  his  mistress,  and  the  strict  regard 
with  which  her  state  of  real  or  dissembled  mourning  would 
draw  the  eyes  of  the  world  upon  her  house-affairs,  Malvolio 
might  feel  the  honour  of  the  family  in  some  sort  in  his  keeping  ;  15 
as  it  appears  not  that  Olivia  had  any  more  brothers,  or  kins- 
men, to  look  to  it  —  for  Sir  Toby  had  dropped  all  such  nice 
respects  at  the  buttery-hatch.  That  Malvolio  was  meant  to  be 
represented  as  possessing  estimable  qualities,  the  expression  of 
the  Duke,  in  his  anxiety  to  have  him  reconciled,  almost  infers :  20 
"Pursue  him,  and  eutreat  him  to  a  peace."  Even  in  his  abused 
state  of  chains  and  darkness,  a  sort  of  greatness  seems  never  to 
desert  him.  He  argues  highly  and  well  with  the  supposed  Sir 
Topas,  and  philosophizes  gallantly  upon  his  straw.^  There 
must  have  been  some  shadow  of  worth  about  the  man  ;  he  must  25 
have  been  something  more  than  a  mere  vapour  —  a  thing  of 
straw,  or  Jack  in  office  —  before  Fabian  and  Maria  could  have 
ventured  sending  him  upon  a  courting-errand  to  Olivia.  There 
was  some  consonancy°  (as  he  would  say)  in  the  undertaking, 
or  the  jest  would  have  been  too  bold  even  for  that  house  of  30 
misrule. 

Bensley,  accordingly,  threw  over  the  part  an  air  of  Spanish 
loftiness.  He  looked,  spake,  and  moved  like  an  old  Castilian. 
He  was  starch,  spruce,  opinionated,  but  his  superstructure  of 

1  Clown.    What    is    the    opinion    of    Pythagoras    concerninaj   wild 

fowl  ? 
Mai.   That  the  soul  of  our  grandam  might  haply  inhabit  a  bird. 
Clown.   What  thinkest  thou  of  his  opinion  ? 
Mai.   I  think  nobly  of  the  soul,  and  uo  way  approve  of  his  opinion. 


164  THE   ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

pride  seemed  bottomed  upon  a  sense  of  worth.  There  was 
something  in  it  beyond  the  coxcomb.  It  was  big  and  swelling, 
but  you  could  not  be  sure  that  it  was  hollow.  You  might  wish 
to  see  it  taken  down,  but  you  felt  that  it  was  upon  an  elevation. 

5  lie  was  magnificent  from  the  outset;  but  when  the  decent 
sobrieties  of  the  character  began  to  give  way.  and  the  poison 
of  self-love,  in  his  conceit  of  the  Countess's  affection,  gradually 
to  work,  you  would  have  thought  that  the  hero  of  l^a  Mane  ha 
iu  person  stood  before  you.     How  he  went  smiling  to  himself  ! 

10  with  what  ineffable  carelessness  would  he  twirl  his  gold  chain! 
what  a  dream  it  was !  you  were  infected  with  the  illusion,  and 
did  not  wish  that  it  should  be  removed !  yon  had  no  room  for 
laughter!  if  an  unseasonable  reflection  of  morality  obtruded 
itself,  it  was  a  deep  sense  of  the  pitiable  infirmity  of  man's 

15  nature,  that  can  lay  him  open  to  such  frenzies  —  but  in  truth 
you  rather  admired  than  pitied  the  lunacy  while  it  lasted  —  you 
t'elt  that  an  hour  of  such  mistake  was  worth  an  age  with  the 
eyes  open.  Who  would  not  wish  to  live  but  for  a  day  in  the 
conceit  of  such  a  lady's  love  as  Olivia?     Wh}-,  the  Duke  would 

20  have  given  his  principality  but  for  a  quarter  of  a  minute,  sleep- 
ing or  waking,  to  have  been  so  deluded.  The  man  seemed  to 
tread  upon  air,  to  taste  manna,  to  walk  with  his  head  in  the 
clouds,  to  mate  Hyperion."  O !  shake  not  the  castles  of 
his  pride  —  endure  yet  for  a  season,  bright  moments  of  confi- 

25dence  —  '•  stand  still,  ye  watches  of  the  element,"  that  Malvolio 
may  be  still  in  fancy  fair  Olivia's  lord!  —  but  fate  and  retribu- 
tion say  no  —  I  hear  the  mischievous  titter  of  Maria  —  the  witty 
taunts  of  Sir  Toby  —  the  still  more  insupportable  triumph  of 
the  foolish  knight — the  counterfeit  Sir  Topas  is  unmasked  —  and 

30  "  thus  the  whirligig  of  time,"  as  the  true  clown  hath  it,  "  brings 
in  his  revenges."  I  confess  that  I  never  saw  the  catastrophe  of 
this  character,  while  Bensley  played  it,  without  a  kind  of  tragic 
interest.  There  was  good  foolery  too.  Few  now  remember 
Dodd.      What  an  Aguecheek  the  stage  lost  in  him  !     Lovegrove, 

35  who  came  nearest  to  the  old  actors,  revived  the  character  some 
few  seasons  ago,  and  made  it  sufficiently  grotesque;  but  Dodd 
was  it,  as  it  came  out  of  nature's  hands.  It  might  be  said  to 
remain  in  puris  Jiaturalibiis°  In  expressing  slowmess  of  appre- 
liension,  this  actor  surpassed  all  others.     You  could  see  the  first 


ON   SOME    OF    THE    OLD    ACTORS  165 

dawn  of  an  idea  stealing  slowly  over  his  countenance,  climbing 
up  by  little  and  little,  with  a  painful  process,  till  it  cleared  up 
at  last  to  the  fulness  of  a  twilight  conception  —  its  highest  merid- 
ian. He  seemed  to  keep  back  his  intellect,  as  some  have  had 
the  power  to  retard  their  pulsation.  The  balloon  takes  less  5 
time  in  filling  than  it  took  to  cover  the  expansion  of  his  broad 
moony  face  over  all  its  quarters  with  expression.  A  glimmer 
of  understanding  would  appear  in  a  corner  of  his  eye,  and  for 
lack  of  fuel  go  out  again.  A  part  of  his  forehead  would  catch  a 
little  intelligence,  and  be  a  long  time  in  communicating  it  to  10 
the  remainder. 

I  am  ill  at  dates,  but  I  think  it  is  now  better  than  five  and 
twenty  years  ago,  that  walking  in  the  gardens  of  Gray's  Inn  — 
they  were  then  far  finer  than  they  are  now  —  the  accursed 
Verulara  Buildings  had  not  encroached  upon  all  the  east  side  15 
of  them,  cutting  out  delicate  green  crankles,  and  shouldering 
away  one  or  two  of  the  stately  alcoves  of  the  terrace  —  the  sur- 
vivor stands  gaping  and  relationless  as  if  it  remembered  its 
brother — they  are  still  the  best  gardens  of  any  of  the  Inns  of 
Court,  my  beloved  Temple  not  forgotten  —  have  the  gravest  char-  20 
acter,  their  aspect  being  altogether  reverend  and  law-breathing 
—  Bacon°  has  left   the  impress  of   his  foot  upon  their  gravel 

walks taking  my  afternoon  solace  on  a  summer  day  upon 

the  aforesaid  terrace,  a  comely  sad  personage  came  towards  me, 
whom,  from  his  grave  air  and  deportment,  I  judged  to  be  one  25 
of  the  old  Benchers  of  the  Inn.  He  had  a  serious,  thoughtful 
forehead,  and  seemed  to  be  in  meditations  of  mortality.  As  I 
have  an  instinctive  awe  of  old  Benchers,  I  was  passing  him  with 
til  at  sort  of  sub-indicative  token  of  respect  which  one  is  apt  to 
demonstrate  towards  a  venerable  stranger,  and  which  rather  30 
denotes  an  inclination  to  greet  him,  than  any  positive  motion 
of  the  body  to  that  effect  —  a  species  of  humility  and  will-wor- 
ship which  I  observe,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  rather  puzzles 
than  pleases  the  person  it  is  offered  to  —  when  the  face  turning 
full  upon  me  strangely  identified  itself  with  that  of  Dodd.  35 
Upon  close  inspection  I  was  not  mistaken.  But  could  this 
sad  thoughtful  countenance  be  the  same  vacant  face  of  folly 
which  I  had  hailed  so  often  under  circumstances  of  gaiety ; 
which  I  had  never  seen  without  a  smile,  or  recognised  but  as 


ICG  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

the  usher  of  mirth  ;  that  looked  out  so  foruially  flat  in  Fopping- 
ton,°  so  frothily  pert  in  Tattle,"^  so  impotently  busy  in  Backbite^ ; 
so  blankly  divested  of  all  meaning,  or  resolutely  expressive  of 
none,  in  Acres,*^  in  Fribble,°  and  a  thousand  agTeeable  imper- 
otinences?  Was  this  the  face  —  full  of  thought  and  carefulness 
—  that  had  so  often  divested  itself  at  \Yill  of  every  trace  of  either 
to  give  me  diversion,  to  clear  my  cloudy  face  for  two  or  three 
liours  at  least  of  its  furrows  !  "Was  this  the  face  —  manly,  sober, 
intelligent  —  which  I  had  so  often  despised,  made  mocks  nt, 

10  made  merry  with  !  The  remembrance  of  the  freedoms  which 
I  had  taken  with  it  came  upon  me  with  a  reproach  of  insult. 
T  could  have  asked  it  pardon.  I  thought  it  looked  upon  me 
with  a  sense  of  injury.  There  is  something  strange  as  well  as 
sad  in  seeing  actors  —  your  pleasant  fellows  particularly  —  snb- 

ISjected  to  and  suffering  the  common  lot;  —  their  fortunes,  their 
casualties,  their  deaths,  seem  to  belong  to  the  scene,  their  actions 
to  be  amenable  to  poetic  justice  only.  We  can  hardly  connect 
them  with  more  awful  responsibilities.  The  death  of  this  fine 
actor  took  place  shortly  after  this  meeting.     He  had  quitted  the 

20  stage  some  months ;  and,  as  I  learned  afterwards,  had  been  in 
the  habit  of  resorting  daily  to  these  gardens  almost  to  the  day 
of  his  decease.  In  these  serious  walks,  probably,  he  was  divest- 
ing himself  of  many  scenic  and  some  real  vanities  —  weaning 
himself  from  the  frivolities  of  the  lesser  and  the  greater  theatre 

25  —  doing  gentle  penance  for  a  life  of  no  very  reprehensible  fool- 
eries,—  taking  oft'  by  degrees  the  buffoon  mask  which  he  might 
feel  he  had  worn  too  long  —  and  rehearsing  for  a  more  solemn 
cast  of  part.     Dying,  he  '-pnt  on  the  weeds  of  Dominic.°"i 
If  few  can  remember  Dodd,  many  yet  living  will  not  easily 

80  forget  the  pleasant  creature,  who  in  those  days  enacted  the  part 

1  Dodd  was  a  mau  of  reading,  and  left  at  his  death  a  choice  collection 
of  old  English  literature.  I  should  judge  him  to  have  been  a  man  of 
wit.  I  know  one  instance  of  an  impromptu  which  no  length  of  study 
could  have  bettered.  My  merry  friend,  -Jem  White,  had  seen  him  one 
evening  in  Agneeheek,  and  recognising  Dodd  the  next  day  in  Fleet  Street 
was  irresistibly  impelled  to  take  off  his  hat  and  salute  him  as  the  iden- 
tical Knight  of  the  preceding  evening  with  a  "Save  you,  Sir  Andreic' 
Dodd,  not  at  all  disconcerted  at  this  unusual  address  from  a  stranger 
with  a  c(.urteous  half-rebuking  wave  of  the  hand,  put  him  off  with  ar 
"Away,  Fool." 


ON    SOME    OF    THE    OLD    ACTORS  1C7 

of  the  Clown  to  Dodd's  Sir  Andrew.  —  Richard,  or  rather  Dicky 
Suett  —  for  so  in  his  life-time  he  delighted  to  be  called,  and 
time  hath  ratified  the  appellation  —  lieth  buried  on  the  north 
side  of  the  cemetery  of  Holy  Paul,  to  whose  service  his  nonage 
and  tender  years  were  dedicated.  There  are  who  do  yet  re- 5 
member  him  at  that  period  —  his  pipe  clear  and  harmonious. 
He  would  often  speak  of  his  chorister  days,  when  he  was 
"cherub  Dicky." 

What  clipped  his  wings,  or  made  it  expedient  that  he  should 
exchange  the  holy  for  the  profane  state ;  whether  he  had  lost  ifl 
his  good  voice  (his  best  recommendation  to  that  office),  like  Sir 
John,^  "  with  hallooing  and  singing  of  anthems  ;  "  or  whether  he 
was  adjudged  to  lack  something,  even  in  those  early  years,  of 
the  gravity  indispensable  to  an  occupation  which  professeth  to 
"commerce  with  the  skies," ° — I  could  never  rightly  learn ;  15 
but  we  find  him,  after  the  x^i'obation  of  a  twelvemonth  or  so, 
reverting  to  a  secular  condition,  and  become  one  of  us. 

I  think  he  was  not  altogether  of  that  timber  out  of  which 
cathedral  seats  and  sounding-boards  are  hewed.  But  if  a  glad 
heart  —  kind  and  therefore  glad  —  be  any  part  of  sanctitv%  then  20 
might  the  robe  of  Motley,  with  which  he  invested  himself  with 
so  much  humility  after  his  deprivation,  and  which  he  wore  so 
long  with  so  much  blameless  satisfaction  to  himself  and  to  the 
public,  be  accepted  for  a  surplice  —  his  white  stole,  and  alhe° 

The  first  fruits  of  his  secularization  was  an  engagement  upon  25 
the  boards  of  Old  Drury,  at  which  theatre  he  commenced,  as  I 
have  been  told,  with  adopting  the  manner  of  Parsons  in  old 
men's  characters.  At  the  period  in  which  most  of  us  knew 
him,  he  was  no  more  an  imitator  than  he  was  in  any  true  sense 
himself  imitable.  30 

He  was  the  Robin  Goodfellow  of  the  stage.  He  came  in  to 
trouble  all  things  with  a  welcome  perplexity,  himself  no  whit 
troubled  for  the  matter.  He  was  known,  like  Puck,  by  his  note 
—  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!  —  sometimes  deepening  to  Ho  !  Ho !  Ho! 
with  an  irresistible  accession,  derived  perhaps  remotely  from  35 
his  ecclesiastical  education,  foreign  to  his  prototype  of —  0  La  ! 
Thousands  of  hearts  yet  respond  to  the  chuckling  0  La !  of 
Dicky  Suett,  brought  back  to  their  remembrance  by  the  faith- 
ful transcript  of  his  friend  ^Mathews's  mimicry.    The  "  force  of 


ICS  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

iiature  could  no  further  go."    He  drolled  upon  the  stock  of  these 
two  syllahles  richer  than  the  cuckoo. 

Care,  that  troubles  all  the  world,  was  forgotten  in  his  compo- 
sition. Had  he  had  but  two  grains  (nay,  half  a  grain)  of  it,  he 
5  could  never  have  supported  himself  upon  those  two  spider's 
strings,  which  served  him  (in  the  latter  part  of  his  unmixed 
existence)  as  legs.  A  doubt  or  a  scruple  must  have  made  him 
totter,  a  sigh  have  puifed  him  down ;  the  weight  of  a  frown  had 
staggered  him,  a  wrinkle  made  him  lose  his  balance.     But  on 

13  he  went,  scrambling  upon  those  airy  stilts  of  his,  with  Robin 
Goodfellow,  "  thorough  brake,  thorough  briar,"°  reckless  of  a 
scratched  face  or  a  torn  doublet. 

Shakspeare  foresaw  him,  when  he  framed  his  fools  and  jesters. 
They  have  all  the  true  Suett  stamp,  a  loose  and  shambling  gait, 

15  a  slippery  tongue,  this  last  the  ready  midwife  to  a  without -pain - 
delivered  jest ;  in  words,  light  as  air,  venting  truths  deep  as  the 
centre ;  with  idlest  rhymes  tagging  conceit  when  busiest,  sing- 
ing with  Lear  in  the  tempest,  or  Sir  Toby  at  the  buttery-hatch. 
.Jack  Bannister  and  he  had  the  fortune  to  be  more  of  personal 

20  favourites  with  the  town  than  any  actors  before  or  after.  The 
difference,  I  take  it,  was  this: — Jack  was  more  beloved  for  his 
sweet,  good-natured,  moral  pretensions.  Dicky  was  more  liked 
for  his  sweet,  good-natured,  no  pretensions  at  all.  Your  whole 
conscience   stirred  with  Bannister's  performance  of  Walter  in 

2.")  the  Children  in  the  Wood° — but  Dicky  seemed  like  a  thing,  as 
Shakspeare  says  of  Love,  too  young  to  know  what  conscience 
is.  He  put  us  into  Yesta's°  days.  Evil  fled  before  him  —  not 
as  from  Jack,  as  from  an  antagonist,  —  but  because  it  could  not 
touch   him,  any  more  than  a  cannon-ball  a  fly.     He  was  de- 

X)  liyered  from  the  burthen  of  that  death;  and,  when  Death  came 
himself,  not  in  metaphor,  to  fetch  Dicky,  it  is  recorded  of  him 
by  Rol^ert  Palmer,  who  kindly  watched  his  exit,  that  he  re- 
ceived the  last  stroke,  neither  varying  his  accustomed  tranquil- 
lity, nor  tune,  with  the  simple  exclamation,  worthy  to  have  been 

35  recorded  in  his  epitaph  —  0  La  !  0  La  !  Bobbi/ ! 

The  elder  Palmer  (of  stage-trading  celebrity)  commonly 
played  Sir  Toby  in  those  days";  but  there  is  a  solidity  of  wit  in 
the  jests  of  that  half-Falstaff  which  he  did  not  quite  fill  out. 
He  was  as  much  too  showy  as  Moody  (who  sometimes  took  the 


ON   SOME    OF    THE    OLD    ACTORS  169 

part)  was  dry  and  sottish.  In  sock  °  or  buskin  °  there  was  an 
air  of  swaggering  gentility  about  Jack  Pahner.  He  was  a 
gentleman  with  a  slight  infusion  of  the  footman.  His  brother 
Bob  (of  recenter  memory),  who  was  his  shadow  in  everything 
while  he  lived,  and  dwindled  into  less  than  a  shadow  afterwards  5 
—  was  a  gentleman  with  a  little  stronger  infusion  of  the  latter 
ingredient ;  that  was  all.  It  is  amazing  how  a  little  of  the  more 
or  less  makes  a  difference  in  these  things.  When  you  saw 
Bobby  in  the  Duke's  Servant,^  you  said,  what  a  pity  such  a 
pretty  fellow  was  only  a  servant !  When  jow  saw  Jack  figuring  10 
in  Captain  Absolute,  you  thought  you  could  trace  his  pi-omo- 
tion  to  some  lady  of  quality  who  fancied  the  handsome  fellow 
in  his  topknot,  and  had  bought  him  a  commission.  Therefore 
Jack  in  Dick  Amlet°  was  insuperable. 

Jack  had  two  voices,  —  both  plausible,  hypocritical,  and  insin- 15 
uating ;  but   his  secondary  or   supplemental  voice  still   more 
decisively  histrionic  than  his  common  one.     It  was  resei-ved  for 
the  spectator  ;  and  the  dramatis  personce  were  supposed  to  know 
nothing  at  all  about  it.     The  lies  of  Young  AYilding,  and  the 
sentiments  in  Joseph  Surf  ace, °  v.'ere  thus  marked  out  in  a  sort  of  20 
italics    to   the  audience.     This  secret  correspondence  with  the 
company  before  the  curtain  (which  is  the  bane  and  death  of 
tragedy)    has   an   extremely   happy  effect  in   some   kinds    of 
comedy,  in  the  more  highly  artificial  comedy  of  Congreve  or 
of  Sheridan  especially,  where  the  absolute  sense  of  reality  (so  25 
indispensable  to  scenes  of  interest)  is  not  required,  or  would 
rather  interfere  to  diminish  your  pleasure.     The  fact  is,  you  do 
not  believe  in  such  characters  as  Surface — the  villain  of  arti- 
ficial comedy  —  even  while  you  read  or  see  them.     If  you  did, 
they  would  shock  and  not  divert  you.     When  Ben,  in  Love  for  30 
Love,  returns  from  sea,  the  following  exquisite  dialogue  occurs 
at  his  first  meeting  with  his  father  :  — 

Sir  Sampson.   Thou  hast  been  many  a  weary  league,  Ben,  since  I  saw 
thee. 

Ben.   Ey,  ey,  been.     Been  far  enough,  an  that  be  all.  — Well,  father,  35 
and  how  do  all  at  home  ?  how  does  brother  Dick  and  brother  Val  ? 

Sir  Sampso7i.   Dick  !   body  o'  me,   Dick  has  been  dead  these  two 
years.    I  writ  you  word  when  you  were  at  Leghorn. 

1  High  Life  Below  Stairs. 


170  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Ben.   Mess,  that's  true ;  Marry,  I  had  forgot.    Dick's  dead,  as  you 
say  —  Well,  aud  how?  —  I  have  a  many  questions  to  ask  you. 

Here  is  an  instance  of  insensibility  which  in  real  life  would 
l)e  revolting-,  or  rather  in  real  life  could  not  have  co-existed 
5  with  the  warm-hearted  temperament  of  the  character.  But 
when  you  read  it  in  the  spirit  with  which  such  playful  selections 
and  specious  combinations  rather  than  strict  metaphrases'^  of 
nature  should  be  taken,  or  when  you  saw  Bannister  play  it,  it 
neitlier  did,  nor  does,  wound  the  moral  sense  at  all.     For  what 

10  is  Ben  —  the  pleasant  sailor  which  Bannister  gives  us — but  a 
piece  of  satire  —  a  creation  of  Congreve's  fancy  —  a  dreamy 
combination  of  all  the  accidents  of  a  sailor's  character — his 
contempt  of  money  —  his  credulity  to  women  — with  that  nec- 
essary estrangement  from  home   which   it   is  just  within  the 

15  verge  of  credibility  to  suppose  might  produce  such  an  hallucina- 
tion as  is  here  described.  We  never  think  the  worst  of  Ben  for 
it,  or  feel  it  as  a  stain  upon  his  character.  But  when  an  actor 
comes,  and  instead  of  the  delightful  phantom  —  the  creature 
dear    to    half-belief  — ■  which    Bannister    exhibited  —  displays 

20  before  our  eyes  a  downright  concretion  of  a  Wapping°  sailor  — 
a  jolly  warm-hearted  Jack  Tar — and  nothing  else  —  when 
instead  of  investing  it  with  a  delicious  confusedness  of  the  head, 
and  a  veering  undirected  goodness  of  purpose  — he  gives  to  it  a 
downright  daylight  understanding,  and  a  full  consciousness  of 

25  its  actions ;  thrusting  forward  the  sensibilities  of  the  character 
with  a  pretence  as  if  it  stood  upon  nothing  else,  and  was  to  be 
judged  by  them  alone — we  feel  the  discord  of  the  thing;  the 
scene  is  disturbed;  a  real  man  has  got  in  among  the  dramatis 
persorKB,  and  puts  them  out.     AVe  want  the  sailor  turned  out. 

30  We  feel  that  his  true  place  is  not  behind  the  curtain  but  in  the 
first  or  second  gallery. 


OX  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY  OF  THE  LAST 
CENTURY 

The  artificial  Comedy,  or  Comedy  of  manners,  is  quite 
extinct  on  our  stage.  Congi-eve  and  Farquhar"  show  their 
heads  once  in  seyen  years  only,  to  be  exploded  and  put  down 


THE    ARTIFICIAL    COMEDY  171 

instantly.  The  times  cannot  bear  them.  Is  it  for  a  few  wild 
speeches,  an  occasional  license  of  dialogue  ?  I  think  not  alto- 
gether. The  business  of  their  dramatic  characters  will  not 
stand  the  moral  test.  We  screw  everything  up  to  that.  Idle 
gallantry  in  a  fiction,  a  dream,  the  passing  pageant  of  an  even- 5 
ing,  startles  us  in  the  same  way  as  the  alarming  indications  of 
profligacy  in  a  son  or  ward  in  real  life  should  startle  a  ];)arent  or 
guardian.  We  have  no  such  middle  emotions  as  dramatic 
interests  left.  We  see  a  stage  libertine  playing  his  loose  j^ranks 
of  tw^o  hours  duration,  and  of  no  after  consequence,  with  the  10 
severe  eyes  which  inspect  real  vices  with  their  bearings  upon 
two  worlds.  We  are  spectators  to  a  plot  or  intrigue  (not 
reducible  in  life  to  the  point  of  strict  moi-ality),  and  take  it  all  for 
truth.  We  substitute  a  real  for  a  dramatic  person,  and  judge 
him  accordingly.  We  try  him  in  our  courts,  from  which  there  15 
is  no  appeal  to  the  dramatis  perso7ice,  his  peers.  AVe  have  been 
spoiled  with  —  not  sentimental  comed}'  —  but  a  tyrant  far  more 
pernicious  to  our  pleasures  which  has  succeeded  to  it,  the 
exclusive  and  all-devouring  drama  of  common  life ;  where  the 
moral  point  is  everything ;  where,  instead  of  the  fictitious  half-  20 
believed  personages  of  the  stage  (the  phantoms  of  old  comedy), 
we  recognise  ourselves,  oiu*  brothers,  aunts,  kinsfolk,  allies, 
patrons,  enemies,  —  the  same  as  in  life,- — with  an  interest  in 
what  is  going  on  so  hearty  and  substantial,  that  we  cannot 
afford  our  moral  judgment,  in  its  deepest  and  most  vital  results,  25 
to  compromise  or  slumber  for  a  moment.  What  is  thei^e  trans- 
acting, by  no  modification  is  made  to  affect  us  in  any  other 
manner  than  the  same  events  or  characters  would  do  in  our 
relationships  of  life.  AVe  carry  our  fireside  concerns  to  the 
theatre  with  us.  AVe  do  not  go  thither,  like  our  ancestors,  to  30 
escape  from  the  pressure  of  reality,  so  much  as  to  confirm  our 
experience  of  it ;  to  make  assurance  double,  and  take  a  bond  of 
fate.°  AVe  must  live  our  toilsome  lives  twice  over,  as  it  was  the 
mournful  privilege  of  Ulysses  °  to  descend  twice  to  the  shades. 
All  that  neutral  ground  of  character,  which  stood  between  vice  35 
and  virtue ;  or  which  in  fact  was  indifferent  to  neither,  where 
neither  properly  was  called  in  question  ;  that  happy  breathing- 
place  from  the  l)urthen  of  a  perpetual  moral  questioning — the 
sanctuary  and  quiet  Alsatia°  of  hunted  casuistry  —  is  broken  up 


172  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

and  disfranchised,  as  injurious  to  the  interests  of  society.  The 
privileges  of  the  place  are  taken  away  by  law.  We  dare  not 
dally  with  images,  or  names,  of  wrong.  We  bark  like  foolish 
do"-.s  at  shadows.     AVe  dread  infection  from  the  scenic  repre- 

5sentation  of  disorder,  and  fear  a  painted  pustule.  In  our 
anxiety  that  our  morality  should  not  take  cold,  we  wrap  it  up 
in  a  great  blanket  surtout  of  precaution  against  the  breeze  and 
sunshine. 

1  confess  for  myself    that    (with  no  great   delinquencies  to 

10  answer  for)  I  am  glad  for  a  season  to  take  an  airing  beyond 
the  diocese  of  the  strict  conscience,  —  not  to  live  always  in  the 
precincts  of  the  law  courts, — but  now  and  then,  for  a  dream- 
while  or  so,  to  imagine  a  world  with  no  meddling  restrictions 
—  to  get  into  recesses,  whither  the  hunter  cannot  follow  me  — 

15  Secret  shades 

Of  woody  Ida's  inmost  grove, 
While  yet  there  was  no  fear  of  Jove. 

I  come  back  to  my  cage  and  my  restraint  the  fresher  and  more 
healthy  for  it.    I  wear  my  shackles  more  contentedly  for  having 

20  respired  the  breath  of  an  imaginary  freedom.  I  do  not  know 
how  it  is  with  others,  but  I  feel  the  better  always  for  the  perusal 
of  one  of  Congreve's  —  nay,  why  should  I  not  add  even  of 
Wycherley's°  —  comedies.  I  am  the  gayer  at  least  for  it ;  and 
I  could  never  connect  those  sports  of  a  witty  fancy  in  any  shape 

25  with  any  result  to  be  drawn  from  them  to  imitation  in  real  life. 
They  are  a  world  of  themselves  almost  as  much  as  fairjdand. 
Take  one  of  their  characters,  male  or  female  (with  few  excep- 
tions they  are  alike),  and  place  it  in  a  modern  play,  and  my 
virtuous  indignation  shall   rise  against   the   profligate  wretcli 

30  as  warmly  as  the  Catos  of  the  pit°  could  desire ;  because  in  a 
modern  |)lay  I  am  to  judge  of  the  right  and  the  wrong.  The 
standard  of  police  is  the  measure  of  political  justice.  The  at- 
mosphere will  blight  it ;  it  cannot  live  here.  It  has  got  into  a 
moral  world,  where  it  has  no  business,  from  which  it  must  needs 

35  fall  headlong ;  as  dizzy,  and  incapable  of  making  a  stand,  as  a 
Swedenborgian  bad  spirit  that  has  wandered  unawares  into  the 
sphere  of  one  of  his  Good  Men,  or  Angels.  But  in  its  own  world 
do  we  feel  the  creature  is  so  very  bad?  — The  Fainalls°  and  the 


THE  A  R  TIFICIAL    COM  ED  Y  173 

Mirabels,"  the  Dorimants°  and  the  Lady  Touchwoods,"  in  their 
own  sphere,  do  not  offend  my  moral  sense ;  in  fact,  they  do  not 
appeal  to  it  at  all.  They  seem  engaged  in  their  proper  element. 
They  break  through  no  laws  or  conscientious  restraints.  They 
know  of  none.  They  have  got  out  of  Christendom  into  the  5 
land  —  what  shall  I  call  it?  —  of  cuckoldry  —  the  Utopia  of 
gallantry,  where  pleasure  is  duty,  and  the  manners  perfect  free- 
dom. It  is  altogether  a  speculative  scene  of  things,  which  has 
no  reference  whatever  to  the  world  that  is.  No  good  person  can 
be  justly  offended  as  a  spectator,  because  no  good  person  suffers  10 
on  the  stage.  Judged  morally,  every  character  in  these  plays  — 
the  few  exceptions  only  are  mistakes  —  is  alike  essentially  vain 
and  worthless.  The  great  art  of  Congreve  is  especially  shown 
in  this,  that  he  has  entirely  excluded  from  his  scenes  —  some 
little  generosities  in  the  part  of  Angelica  perhaps  excepted  — 15 
not  only  anything  like  a  faultless  character,  but  any  pretensions 
to  goodness  or  good  feelings  whatsoever.  Whether  he  did  this 
designedly,  or  instinctively,  the  effect  is  as  happy  as  the  design 
(if  design)  was  bold.  I  used  to  wonder  at  the  strange  power 
which  his  Way  of  the  World  in  particular  possesses  of  interest-  20 
ing  you  all  along  in  the  pursuits  of  characters,  for  whom  you 
absolutely  care  nothing  —  for  you  neither  hate  nor  love  his 
personages — and  I  think  it  is  owing  to  this  very  indifference 
for  any,  that  you  endure  the  whole.  He  has  spread  a  privation 
of  moral  light,  I  will  call  it,  rather  than  by  the  ugly  name  of  25 
palpable  darkness,  over  his  creations;  and  his  shadows  flit 
before  yon  wdthout  distinction  or  preference.  Had  he  intro- 
duced a  good  character,  a  single  gush  of  moral  feeling,  a  revul- 
sion of  the  judgment  to  actual  life  and  actual  duties,  the 
impertinent  Goshen  would  have  only  lighted  to  the  discovery  oO 
of  deformities,  which  now  are  none,  because  we  think  them 
none. 

Translated  into  real  life,  the  characters  of  his,  and  his  friend 
W^ycherley's  dramas,  are  profligates  and  strumpets, — the  busi- 
ness of  their  brief  existence,  the  undivided  pursuit  of  lawless  35 
gallantry.  No  other  spring  of  action,  or  possible  motive  of 
conduct,  is  recognised  ;  principles  which,  universally  acted  upon, 
must  reduce  this  frame  of  things  to  a  chaos.  But  we  do  them 
wrong  in  so  translating  them.    No  such  effects  are  produced,  in 


174  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

(heir  world.  When  we  are  among  them,  we  are  amongst  a 
chaotic  people.  We  are  not  to  judge  them  by  our  usages.  No 
reverend  institutions  are  insulted  by  their  proceedings  —  for 
they  have  none  among  them.     No  peace  of  families  is  violated 

5  —  for  no  family  ties  e'xist  among  them.  No  purity  of  the  mar- 
riage bed  is  stained  —  for  none  is  supposed  to  have  a  being. 
No  deep  affections  are  disquieted,  no  holy  wedlock  bands  are 
snapped  asunder  —  for  affection's  depth  and  wedded  faith  are 
not  of  the  growth  of  that  soil.    There  is  neither  right  nor  wrong, 

10  —  gratitude  or  its  opposite,  —  claim  or  duty,  —  paternity  or  son- 
ship.  Of  what  consequence  is  it  to  Virtue,  or  how  is  she  at  all 
concerned  about  it,  whether  Sir  Simon°  or  Dapperwit°  steal 
awav  Miss  Martha  °;  or  who  is  the  father  of  Lord  Froth's°  or 
Sir  Paul  Pliant's^  chUdren  ? 

15  The  whole  is  a  passing  pageant,  where  we  should  sit  as  un- 
concerned at  the  issues,  for  life  or  death,  as  at  the  battle  of  the 
frogs  and  mice.  But,  like  Don  Quixote,  we  take  part  against 
the  puppets,  and  quite  as  impertiiiently.  We  dare  not  contem- 
jilate  an  Atlantis,^  a  scheme,  out  of  which  our  coxcombical  moral 

20  sense  is  for  a  little  transitory  ease  excluded.  We  have  not  the 
courage  to  imagine  a  state  of  things  for  which  there  is  neither 
reward  nor  punishment.  AVe  cling  to  the  painful  necessities  of 
shame  and  l)lame.     We  would  indict  our  very  dreams. 

Amidst  the  mortifying  circumstances  attendant  upon  grow- 

'_'.')  ing  old.  it  is  something  to  have  seen  the  School  for  Scandal  in 
its  glory.  This  comedy  grew  out  of  Congreve  and  Wycherley, 
but  gathered  some  allays  of  the  sentimental  comedy  which 
followed  theirs.  It  is  impossible  that  it  should  be  now  acted, 
though  it  continues,  at  long  intervals,  to  be  announced  in  the 

30  bills.  Its  hero,  when  Palmer  played  it  at  least,  was  Joseph 
Surface.  AVhen  I  remember  the  gay  boldness,  the  graceful 
solemn  plausibility,  the  meai?ured  stepi^  the  inshiuating  voice  — 
to  express  it  in  a  word  —  the  downright  acted  villany  of  the 
part,  so  different  from  the  pressure  of  conscious  actual  wicked- 

;r,  ness.  —  the  liypocritical  assumption  of  hypocrisy,  —  which  made 
Jack  so  deservedly  a  favourite  in  that  character,  I  must  needs 
conclude  the  present  generation  of  playgoers  more  virtuous  than 
myself,  or  more  dense.  I  freely  confess  that  he  divided  the 
palm  with  me  with  his  better  brother;  that,  in  fact,  I  liked 


THE    ARTIFICIAL    COMEDY  175 

him  quite  as  well.  Xot  but  there  are  passages,  —  like  that,  for 
instance,  where  Joseph  is  made  to  refuse  a  pittance  to  a  poor 
relation,  —  incongruities  w^hich  Sheridan  was  forced  upon  by 
the  attempt  to  join  the  artiiicial  with  the  sentimental  comedy, 
either  of  which  must  destroy  the  other  —  but  over  these  ob- 5 
structions  Jack's  manner  floated  him  so  lightly,  that  a  re- 
fusal from  him  no  more  shocked  you,  than  the  easy  compliance 
of  Charles  gave  you  in  reality  any  pleasure;  you  got  over 
the  paltry  question  as  quickly  as  you  could,  to  get  back  into 
the  regions  of  pure  comedy,  where  no  cold  moral  reignSc  The  10 
highly  artificial  manner  of  Palmer  in  this  character  counter- 
acted every  disagreeable  impression  which  you  might  have  re- 
ceived from  the  contrast,  supposing  them  real,  between  the  two 
brothers.  You  did  not  believe  in  Joseph  with  the  same  faith 
with  which  you  believed  in  Charles.  The  latter  was  a  pleasant  15 
reality,  the  former  a  no  less  pleasant  poetical  foil  to  it.  The 
comedy,  I  have  said,  is  incongruous;  a  mixture  of  Congreve 
with  sentimental  incompatibilities  ;  the  gaiety  upon  the  whole 
is  buoyant ;  but  it  required  the  consummate  art  of  Palmer  to 
reconcile  the  discordant  elements.  20 

A  player  with  Jack's  talents,  if  we  had  one  now,  W'Ould  not 
dare  to  do  the  part  in  the  same  manner.  He  would  instinctively 
avoid  every  turn  which  might  tend  to  unrealise,  and  so  to  make 
the  character  fascinating.  He  must  take  his  cue  from  his  spec- 
tators, who  would  expect  a  bad  man  and  a  good  man  as  rigidly  25 
opposed  to  each  other  as  the  deathbeds  of  those  geniuses  are 
contrasted  in  the  prints,  which  1  am  sorry  to  say  have  disap- 
peared from  the  windows  of  my  old  friend  Carrington  Bowles, 
of  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  memory —  (an  exhibition  as  venerable 
as  the  adjacent  cathedral,  and  almost  coeval)  of  the  bad  and  30 
good  man  at  the  hour  of  death;  where  the  ghastly  apprehen- 
sions of  the  former,  —  and  truly  the  grim  phantom  with  his 
reality  of  a  toasting-fork  is  not  to  be  despised,  —  so  finely  con- 
trast with  the  meek  complacent  kissing  of  the  rod,  —  taking  it 
in  like  honey  and  butter,  —  with  which  the  latter  submits  to  35 
the  scythe  of  the  gentle  bleeder,  Time,  who  wields  his  lancet 
with  the  apprehensive  finger  of  a  popular  young  ladies'  surgeon. 
What  flesh,  like  loving  grass,  w^ould  not  covet  to  meet  halfway 
the  stroke  of  such  a  delicate  mow^er?  —  John  Palmer  was  twice 


17G  THE    ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

an  actor  in  this  exquisite  part.  He  was  playing  to  you  all  the 
while  that  he  was  playing  upon  Sir  Peter  and  his  lady.  You 
liad  the  first  intimation  of  a  sentiment  before  it  was  on  his  lips. 
His  altered  voice  was  meant  to  you,  and  you  were  to  suppose 
5  that  his  fictitious  co-flutterers  on  the  stage  perceived  nothing  at 
all  of  it.  What  was  it  to  you  if  that  half-reality,  the  husband, 
was  overreached  by  the  puppetry  —  or  the  thin  thing  (Lady 
Teazle's  reputation)  was  persuaded  it  was  dying  of  a  plethory? 
The  fortunes  of  Othello  and  Desdemona  were  not  concerned  in 
10  it.  Poor  Jack  has  passed  from  the  stage  in  good  time,  that  he 
did  not  live  to  this  our  age  of  seriousness.  The  pleasant  old 
Teazle  King,  too,  is  gone  in  good  time.  His  manner  would 
scarce  have  pa.ssed  current  in  our  day.     We  must  love  or  hate 

—  acquit  or  condemn  —  censure  or  pity  —  exert  our  detestable 
15  coxcombry  of  moral  judgment  upon  everything.   Joseph  Surface, 

to  go  down  now,  must  be  a  downright  revolting  villain  —  no 
compromise  —  his  first  appearance  must  shock  and  give  horror 

—  his  specious  plausibilities,  which  the  pleasurable  faculties  of 
our  fathers  welcomed  with  such  hearty  greetings,  knowing  that 

20  no  harm  (dramatic  harm  even)  could  come,  or  was  meant  to 
come,  of  them,  must  inspire  a  cold  and  killing  aversion.  Charles 
(the  real  canting  person  of  the  scene  —  for  the  hypocrisy  of 
Joseph  has  its  ulterior  legitimate  ends,  but  his  brother's  pro- 
fessions of  a  good  heart  centre  in  downright  self-satisfaction) 

2.J  must  be  loced,  and  Joseph  hated.  To  balance  one  disagreeable 
reality  with  another,  Sir  Peter  Teazle  must  be  no  longer  the 
comic  idea  of  a  fretful  "old  bachelor  bridegroom,  whose  teasings 
(while  King  acted  it)  were  evidently  as  much  played  off  at  you, 
as  they  were  meant  to  concern  anybody  on  the  stage,  —  he  must 

'.Obe  a  real  person,  capable  in  law  of  sustaining  an  injury — a  per- 
son towards  whom  duties  are  to  be  acknowledged  —  the  genuine 
crim-con-antagonist  of  the  villanous  seducer  Joseph.  To  realise 
him  more,  his  sufferings  under  his  unfortunate^  match  must 
have  the  downright  pungency  of  life  —  must  (or  should)  make 

35  you  not  mirthful  but  uncomfortable,  just  as  the  same  predica- 
ment would  move  you  in  a  neighbour  or  old  friend.  The  deli- 
cious scenes  which  give  the  play  its  name  and  zest,  must  affect 
you  in  the  same  serious  manner  as  if  you  heard  the  reputation 
of  a  dear  female  friend  attacked  in  your  real  presence.     Crab- 


THE    ARTIFICIAL    COMEDY  177 

tree  and  Sir  Benjamin  —  those  poor  snakes  that  live  but  in  the 
sunshine  of  your  mirth  —  must  be  ripened  by  this  hot-bed  process 
of  realization  into  asps  or  amphisbsenas ;  and  Mrs.  Candour — 
O  !  frightful !  —  become  a  hooded  serpent.  O  !  who  that  remem- 
bers Parsons  and  Dodd  —  the  wasp  and  butterfly  of  the  School  5 
for  Scandal  —  in  those  two  characters;  and  charming  natural 
Miss  Pope,  the  perfect  gentlewoman  as  distinguished  from  the 
fine  lady  of  comedy,  in  this  latter  part  —  would  forego  the  true 
scenic  delight  —  the  escape  from  life  —  the  oblivion  of  conse- 
quences—  the  holiday  barring  out  of  the  pedant  Reflection — 10 
those  Saturnalia^  of  two  or  three  brief  hours,  well  won  from  the 
world  —  to  sit  instead  at  one  of  our  modern  plays  —  to  have  his 
coward  conscience"  (that  forsooth  must  not  be  lei't  for  a  moment) 
stimulated  with  perpetual  appeals  —  dulled  rather,  and  blunted, 
as  a  faculty  without  repose  must  be  —  and  his  moral  vanity  15' 
i:)ampered  with  images  of  notional  justice,  notional  beneficence, 
lives  saved  without  the  spectator's  risk,  and  fortunes  given  away 
that  cost  the  author  nothing? 

No  piece  was,  perhaps,  ever  so  completely  cast  in  all  its  parts 
as  this  manager's  comedy.  Miss  Farren  had  succeeded  to  Mrs.  20 
Abington  in  Lady  Teazle;  and  Smith,  the  original  Charles,  had 
retired  when  I  first  saw  it.  The  rest  of  the  characters,  with 
very  slight  exceptions,  remained.  I  remember  it  was  then  the 
fashion  to  cry  down  John  Kemble,  who  took  the  part  of  Charles 
after  Smith  ;  but,  I  thought,  very  unjustly.  Smith,  I  fancy,  was  25 
more  airy,  and  took  the  eye  with  a  certain  gaiety  of  person.  He 
])rought  with  him  no  sombre  recollections  of  tragedy.  He  had 
not  to  expiate  the  fault  of  having  pleased  beforehand  in  lofty 
declamation.  He  had  no  sins  of  Hamlet  or  of  Richard  to  atone 
for.  His  failure  in  these  parts  was  a  passport  to  success  in  one  oO 
of  so  opposite  a  tendency.  But,  as  far  as  I  could  judge,  the 
weighty  sense  of  Kemble  made  up  for  more  personal  incapacity 
than  he  had  to  answer  for.  His  harshest  tones  in  this  part  came 
steeped  and  dulcified  in  good  humour.  He  made  his  defects  a 
grace.  His  exact  declamatory  manner,  as  he  managed  it,  only  35 
served  to  convey  the  points  of  his  dialogue  with  more  precision. 
It  seemed  to  head  the  shafts  to  carry  them  deeper.  Not  one  of 
his  sparkling  sentences  was  lost.  I  remember  minutely  how  he 
delivered  each  in  succession,  and  cannot  by  any  effort  imagine 

N 


178  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

how  any  of  them  could  be  altered  for  the  better.  Xo  man  could 
deliver '  brilliant  dialogue  —  the  dialogue  of  Congreve  or  of 
Wvcherley  —  because  none  understood  it  —  half  so  well  as 
John  Keinble.  His  Valentine,  in  Love  for  Love,  was,  to  my 
5  recollection,  faultless.  He  flagged  sometimes  in  the  intervals 
of  tragic  passion.  He  would  slumber  over  the  level  parts  of  an 
lieroic  character.  His  Macbeth  has  been  known  to  nod.  But 
he  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  particularly  alive  to  pointed  and 
witty  dialogue.     The  relaxing  levities  of  tragedy  have  not  been 

10  touched  by  any  since  him  —  the  playful  court-bred  spirit  in 
which  he  condescended  to  the  pla^^ers  in  Hamlet  —  the  sportive 
relief  which  he  threw  into  the  darker  shades  of  Richard  —  dis- 
appeared with  him.  He  had  his  sluggish  moods,  his  torpors  — 
but  they  were  the  halting-stones  and  resting-place  of  his  tragedy 

15  —  politic  savings,  and  fetches  of  the  breath  —  husbandry  of  the 
lungs,  where  nature  pointed  him  to  be  an  economist  —  rather, 
I  think  than  errors  of  the  judgment.  They  were,  at  worst,  less 
painful  than  the  eternal  tormenting  unappeasable  vigilance,  — 
the  'Aidless  dragon  eyes,"  of  present  fashionable  tragedy. 


OX  THE  ACTING  OF  MUNDEX 

'20  X(^T  many  nights  ago  I  had  come  home  from  seeing  this 
extraordinary  performer  in  Cockletop :  and  when  I  retired  to 
my  pillow,  his  whimsical  image  still  stuck  by  me,  in  a  manner 
as  to  threaten  sleep.  In  vain  I  tried  to  divest  myself  of  it,  by 
conjuring  up  the  most  opposite  associations.     I  resolved  to  be 

25  serious.  I  raised  up  the  gravest  topics  of  life  ;  private  misery, 
public  calamity.     All  would  not  do  : 


■There  the  antic  sate 


Mocking  our  state 


his  queer  visnomy—  his  bewildering  costume  —  all  the  strange 

30  things   which    he    had   raked    together  — his    serpentine    rod 

swaggmg  about  ui  his  pocket  —  Cleopatra's  tear,  and  the  rest 


THE    ACTING    OF    MUNDEN  179 

of  hi.s  relics  —  O'Keefe's  wild  farce,  and  his  wilder  commentary 
—  till  the  passion  of  laughter,  like  grief  in  excess,  relieved 
itself  by  its  own  weight,  inviting  the  sleep  which  in  the  first 
instance  it  had  driven  away. 

But  I  was  not  to  escape  so  easily.      No  sooner  did  I  fall  into  5 
slumbers,  than  the  same  image,  only  more  perplexing,  assailed 
me    in   the   shape   of   dreams.      Not    one    Miinden,    but    five 
hundred,    were    dancing    before    me,    like    the   faces    which, 
whether  you  will   or   no,  come   when   you  have   been   taking 
opium  —  all  the  strange  combinations,  which  this  strangest  of  10 
all  strange  mortals  ever  shot  his  proper  countenance  into,  from 
the  day  he  came  commissioned  to  dry  up  the  tears  of  the  town 
for  the  loss  of   the  now  almost  forgotten  Edwin.     O  for  the 
power  of   the  pencil  to  have  fixed  them  when  I    awoke  !     A 
season  or  two  since,  there  was  exhibited  a  Hogarth  gallery.  15 
I   do   not  see  why    there    should    not    be   a   ]\Iunden    gallery. 
In  richness  and  variety,  the  latter  would  not  fall  far  short  of  the 
former. 

There  is  one  face  of   Farley,  one  face  of  Knight,  one  (but 
what  a  one  it  is!)  of  Liston° ;  bnt  INInnden  has  none  that  you  20 
can  properly  pin  down,  and  call  his.     When  you  think  he  has 
exhausted  his  battery  of  looks,  in  unaccountable  warfare  with 
your  gravity,  suddenly  he  sprouts  out  an  entirely  new  set  of 
features,  like  Hydra.     He  is  not  one,  but  legion ;  not  so  much 
a  comedian,  as  a  company.     If  his  name  could  be  multiplied  25 
like   his  countenance,  it  might   fill   a   play-bill.     He,  and   he 
alone,  literally  makes  faces :  applied  to  any  other  person,  the 
phrase  is  a  mere  figure,  denoting  certain  modifications  of  the 
human  countenance.     Out  of  some  invisible  wardrobe  he  dips 
for  faces,  as  his  friend  Suett  used  for  wigs,  and  fetches  them  30 
out  as  easily.     I  should  not  be  surprised  to  see  him  some  day 
put  out  the  head  of  a  river-horse :  or  come  forth  a  pewitt,  or 
lapwing,  some  feathered  metamorphosis. 

I  have  seen  this  gifted  actor  in  Sir  Christopher  Curry — in 
old  Dornton  —  diffuse  a  glow  of  sentiment  which  has  made  the  35 
I^ulse  of  a  crowded  theatre  beat  like  that  of  one  man  ;  when  he 
has  come  in  aid  of  the  pulpit,  doing  good  to  the  moral  heart  of  a 
people.  I  have  seen  some  faint  approaches  to  this  sort  of 
excellence  in  other  players.     But  in   the    grand   grotesque   of 


180  THE   ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

farce,  ]\Iimden  stands  out  as  single  and  unaccompanied  as 
Hogarth.  Hogarth,  strange  to  tell,  had  no  followers.  The 
school  of  Miinden  began,  and  must  end,  with  himself. 

Can  any  man  wonder,  like  him  ?  can  any  man  see  ghosts,  like 

shim?  or Jight  with  his  own  shadow — •"sessa°"  —  as  he  does  in 
that  strangely-neglected  thing,  the  Cobbler  of  Preston  — 
where  his  alternations  from  the  Cobbler  to  the  Magnifico,  and 
from  the  Magnifico  to  the  Cobbler,  keep  the  brain  of  the 
spectator  in  as  wild  a  ferment,  as  if  some  Arabian  Night  were 

10  being  acted  before  him.  Who  like  him  can  throw,  or  ever 
attempted  to  throw,  a  preternatural  interest  over  the  common- 
est daily -life  objects  ?  A  table  or  a  joint-stool,  in  his  conception, 
rises  into  a  dignity  equivalent  to  Cassiopeia's^  chair.  It  is 
invested  with  constellatory  importance.     You  could  not  speak 

15  of  it  with  more  deference,  if  it  were  mounted  into  the  firma- 
ment. A  beggar  in  the  hands  of  Michael  Angelo,  says  Fuseli,° 
rose  the  Patriarch  of  Poverty.  So  the  gusto  of  Munden 
antiquates  and  ennobles  what  it  touches.  His  pots  and  his 
ladles  are  as  grand  and  primal  as  the  seething-pots  and  liooks 

•JO  seen  in  old  prophetic  vision.  A  tub  of  butter,  contemplated  by 
liim,  amounts  to  a  Platonic  idea.  He  understands  a  leg  of 
mutton  in  its  quiddity.^  He  stands  wondering,  amid  the 
commonplace  materials  of  life,  like  primaeval  man  with  the 
sun  and  stars  about  him. 


THE  LAST   ESSAYS 


ELIA 


A  Sequel  to  Essays  published  under 
That  Xame 


PREFACE 

BY  A  FRIEND  OF  THE  LATE  ELIA 

This  poor  gentleman,  who  for  some  months  past  had  been 
in  a  declining  way,  hath  at  length  paid  his  final  tribnte  to 
nature. 

To  say  truth,  it  is  time  he  a\  ere  gone.     The  humour  of  the 
thing,  if  there  was  ever  much  in  it,  was  pretty  well  exhausted  ;  5 
and  a  two  years  and  a  half  existence   has   been  a  tolerable 
duration  for  a  phantom. 

I  am  now  at  liberty  to  confess,  that  much  which  I  have  heard 
objected  to  my  late  friend's  writings  was  well-founded.  Crude 
they  are,  I  grant  you  —  a  sort  of  unlicked,  incondite  things — 10 
villanously  pranked  in  an  affected  array  of  antique  modes  and 
phrases.°  They  had  not  been  his,  if  they  had  been  other  than 
such ;  and  better  it  is,  that  a  writer  should  be  natural  in  a 
self-j)leasing  quaintness,  than  to  affect  a  naturalness  (so  called) 
that  should  be  strange  to  him.  Egotistical  they  have  been  15 
pronounced  by  some  who  did  not  know,  that  what  he  tells  us, 
as  of  himself,  was  often  true  only  (historically)  of  another;  as 
in  a  former  Essay  (to  save  many  instances)  —  where  under  the 
Ji7st  person  (his  favourite  figure)  he  shadows  forth  the  forlorn 
estate  of  a  country-boy  placed  at  a  London  school,  far  from  his  20 
friends  and  connections — in  direct  opposition  to  his  own  early 
history.  If  it  be  egotism  to  imply  and  twine  with  his  own 
identity  the  griefs  and  affections  of  another  —  making  himself 
many,  or  reducing  many  unto  himself  —  then  is  the  skilful 
novelist,  w^ho  all  along  brings  in  his  hero,  or  heroine,  speaking  25 
of  themselves,  the  greatest  egotist  of  all ;  who  yet  has  never, 
therefore,  been  accused  of  that  narrowness.  And  how  shall  the 
intenser  dramatist  escape  being  faulty,  who  doubtless,  under 
cover  of  passion  uttered  by  another,  oftentimes  gives  blameless 

183 


184  •  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

vent  to  his  most  inward  feelings,  and  expresses  his  own  story 
modestly  ? 

My  late  friend  was  in  many  respects  a  singular  character. 
Those  who  did  not  like  him,  hated  him;  and  some,  who  once 
5  liked  him,  afterwards  became  his  bitterest  haters.  The  truth  is, 
he  gave  himself  too  little  concern  what  he  uttered,  and  in  whose 
presence.  He  observed  neither  time  nor  place,  and  would  e'en 
out  with  what  came  uppermost.  AYith  the  severe  religionist 
he  would  pass  for  a  free-thinker ;  while  the  other  faction  set 

10  liim  down  for  a  bigot,  or  persuaded  themselves  that  he  belied 
his  sentiments.  Few  understood  him ;  and  I  am  not  certain 
that  at  all  times  he  quite  understood  himself.  He  too  much 
affected  that  dangerous  figure  —  irony.  He  sowed  doubtful 
speeches,  and   reaped   plain,   unequivocal   hatred.     He   would 

15 interrupt  the  gravest  discussion  with  some  light  jest;  and  yet, 
perhaps,  not  quite  irrelevant  in  ears  that  could  understand  it. 
Your  long  and  much  talkers  hated  him.  The  informal  habit 
of  his  mind,  joined  to  an  inveterate  impediment  of  speech, 
forl^ade  him  to  be  an  orator;  and  he  seemed  determined  that 

20  no  one  else  should  play  that  part  when  he  was  present.  He 
was  petit  and  ordinary  in  his  person  and  appearance.  I  have 
seen  him  sometimes  in  what  is  called  good  company,  but  where 
he  has  been  a  stranger,  sit  silent,  and  "be  suspected  for  an  odd 
fellow;    till  some   unlucky   occasion   provoking   it,    he   would 

25  stutter  out  some  senseless  pun  (not  altogether  senseless  perhaps. 
if  rightly  taken),  which  has  stamped  his  character  for  the 
evening.  It  was  hit  or  miss  with  him ;  but  nine  times  out  of 
ten  he  contrived  by  this  device  to  send  away  a  whole  company 
his  enemies.     His  conceptions  rose  kindlier  than  his  utterance, 

31^  and  his  happiest  impromptus  had  the  appearance  of  effort.  He 
has  been  accused  of  trying  to  be  wittv,  when  in  truth  he  was 
but  struggling  to  give  his  poor  thoughts  articulation.  He 
chose  his  companions  for  some  individuality  of  character  which 
they  manifested.  —  Hence,  not  manv  persons  of  science,  and 

35  few  professed  literati,  were  of  his  councils.  They  were,  for  the 
most  part,  persons  of  an  uncertain  fortune;  and,  as  to  such 
people  commonly  nothing  is  more  obnoxious  than  a  gentleman 
of  settled  (though  moderate)  income,  he  passed  with  most  of 
them  for  a  great  miser.     To  my  knowledge  this  was  a  mistake. 


PREFACE  185 

His  intimados,  to  confess  a  truth,  were  in  the  world's  eye  a 
ragged  regiment.  He  found  them  floating  on  the  surface  of 
society;  and  the  colour,  or  something  else,  in  the  weed  pleased 
him.  The  burrs  stuck  to  him  —  but  they  were  good  and  loving 
burrs  for  all  that.  He  never  greatly  cared  for  the  society  of  5 
what  are  called  good  people.  If  any  of  these  were  scandalised 
(and  oifences  were  sure  to  arise),  he  could  not  help  it.  When 
he  has  been  remonstrated  with  for  not  making  more  concessions 
to  the  feelings  of  good  people,  he  would  retort  by  asking,  what 
one  point  did  these  good  people  ever  concede  to  him  ?  He  was  10 
temperate  in  his  meals  and  diversions,  but  always  kept  a  little 
on  this  side  of  abstemiousness.  Only  in  the  use  of  the  Indian 
weed  he  might  be  thought  a  little  excessive.  He  took  it,  he 
would  say,  as  a  solvent  of  speech.  Marry  —  as  the  friendly 
vapour  ascended,  how  his  prattle  would  curl  up  sometimes  with  15 
it!  the  ligaments  which  tongue-tied  him  were  loosened,  and  the 
stammerer  proceeded  a  statist. 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  ought  to  bemoan  or  rejoice  that 
my  old  friend  is  departed.  His  jests  were  beginning  to  grow 
obsolete,  and  his  stories  to  be  found  out.  He  felt  the  approaches  20 
of  age ;  and  while  he  pretended  to  cling  to  life,  you  saw  how 
slender  were  the  ties  left  to  bind  him.  Discoursing  with  him 
latterly  on  this  subject,  he  expressed  himself  with  a  pettishness, 
which  I  thought  unworthy  of  him.  In  our  walks  about  his 
suburban  retreat  (as  he  called  it)  at  Shacklewell,  some  children  25 
belonging  to  a  school  of  industry  had  met  us,  and  bowed  and 
curtseyed,  as  he  thought,  in  an  especial  manner  to  hhn.  "  They 
take  me  for  a  visiting  governor,"  he  muttered  earnestly.  He 
had  a  horror,  which  he  carried  to  a  foible,  of  looking  like 
anything  important  and  parochial.  He  thought  that  he  30 
approached  nearer  to  that  stamp  daily.  He  had  a  general 
aversion  from  being  ti-eated  like  a  grave  or  respectable  charac- 
ter, and  kept  a  wary  eye  upon  the  advances  of  age  that  should 
60  entitle  him.  He  herded  always,  while  it  was  possible,  with 
people  younger  than  himself.  He  did  not  conform  to  the  march  35 
of  time,  but  was  dragged  along  in  the  procession.  His  manners 
lagged  behind  his  years.  He  was  too  much  of  the  boy-man. 
The  toga  virilis°  never  sate  gracefully  on  his  shoulders.  Tlie 
impressions  of  infancy  had  burnt  into  him,  and  he  resented  the 


18G  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

impertinence  of  manhood.     These  were  weaknesses  ;    but  such 
as  they  were,  they  are  a  key  to  explicate  some  of  his  writings. 


BLAKESMOOR  IN  H SHIRE 

I  DO  not  know  a  pleasure  more  affecting  than  to  range  at 
will  over  the  deserted  apartments  of  some  fine  old  family  man- 
5  sion.  The  traces  of  extinct  grandeur  admit  of  a  better  passion 
than  envy :  and  contemplations  on  the  great  and  good,  whom 
we  fancy  in  succession  to  have  been  its  inhabitants,  weave  for 
us  illusions,  incompatible  with  the  bustle  of  modern  occupancy, 
and  vanities  of  foolish  present  aristocracy.     The  same  differ- 

10  ence  of  feeling,  I  think,  attends  us  between  entering  an  empty 
and  a  crowded  church.  In  the  latter  it  is  chance  but  some 
present  human  frailty  —  an  act  of  inattention  on  the  part  of 
some  of  the  auditory  —  or  a  trait  of  affectation,  or  worse,  vain- 
glory, on  that  of  the  preacher,  puts  us  by°  our  best  thoughts, 

15  disharmonising  the  jDlace  and  the  occasion.  But  would'st  thou 
know  the  beauty  of  holiness?  —  go  alone  on  some  week-day, 
borrowing  the  keys  of  good  Master  Sexton,  traverse  the  cool 
aisles  of  some  country  church  :  think  of  the  piety  that  has 
kneeled  there — the  congregations,  old  and  young,  that  have 

20  found  consolation  there  —  the  meek  pastor — the  docile  parish- 
ioner. With  no  disturbing  emotions,  no  cross  conflicting  com- 
iiarisons,  drink  in  the  tranquillity  of  the  place,  till  thou  thyself 
become  as  fixed  and  motionless  as  the  marble  effigies  that  kneel 
and  weep  around  thee. 

2.5  Journeying  northward  lately,  I  could  not  resist  going  some 
few  miles  out  of  my  road  to  look  upon  the  remains  of  an  old 
great  house  with  which  I  had  been  impressed  in  this  wav  in 
infancy.  I  was  apprised  that  the  owner  of  it  had  lately  pulled 
it  down ;  still  I  had  a  vague  notion  that  it  could  not  all  have 

30  perished,  —  that  so  much  solidity  with  magnificence  could  not 
have  lieen  crushed  all  at  once  into  the  mere  dust  and  rubbish 
which  I  found  it. 

The  work  of  ruin  had  proceeded  with  a  swift  hand  indeed, 


BLAKESMOOR    IX    H SHIRE  187 

and  the  demolition  of  a  few  weeks  iiad  reduced  it  to  —  an  anti- 
quity. 

I  was  astonished  at  the  indistinction  of  everything.     AVhere 
had  stood  the  great  gates?     What   bounded   the  court-yard? 
Whereabout  did  the  out-houses  commence?  a  few  bricks  only  5 
lay  as  representatives  of  that  which  was  so  stately  and  so  spa- 
cious. 

Death  does  not   shrink  up   his  human  victim  at  this  rate. 
The  burnt  ashes  of  a  man  weigh  more  in  their  proportion. 

Had  I  seen  these  brick-and-mortar  knaves  at  their  process  of  10 
destruction,  at  the  plucking  of  every  panel  I  should  have  felt 
the  varlets  at  my  heart.  I  should  have  cried  out  to  them  to 
spare  a  plank  at  least  out  of  tlie  cheerful  storeroom,  in  whose 
hot  window-seat  I  used  to  sit  and  read  Cowley,  with  the  grass- 
plat  before,  and  the  hum  and  flappings  of  that  one  solitary  15 
wasp  that  ever  haunted  it  about  me  —  it  is  in  mine  ears  now,  as 
oft  as  summer  returns ;  or  a  panel  of  the  yellow-room. 

Why,  every  plank  and  panel  of  that  house  for  me  had  magic 
in  it.  The  tapestried  bedrooms  — tapestry  so  much  better  than 
painting  —  not  adorning  merely,  but  peopling  the  wainscots — 20 
at  which  childhood  ever  and  anon  would  steal  a  look,  shifting 
its  coverlid  (replaced  as  quickly)  to  exercise  its  tender  courage 
in  a  momentary  eye-encounter  with  those  stern  bright  visages, 
staring  reciprocally  —  all  Ovid  on  the  walls,  in  colours  vivider 
than  his  descriptions.  Actseon°  in  mid  sprout,  with  the  unap-25 
peasable  prudery  of  Diana ;  and  the  still  more  provoking  and 
almost  culinary  coolness  of  Dan°  Phoebus,  eel-fashion,  deliber- 
ately divesting  of  Marsyas. 

Then,  that  haunted  room  —  in  which  old  Mrs.  Battle°  died  — 
whereinto  I  have  crept,  but  always  in  the  day-time,  with  a  pas- 30 
sion  of  fear  ;  and  a  sneaking  curiosity,  terror-tainted,  to  hold 
communication  with    the   past.  —  How  shall    they  build   it  up 
again  ? 

It  was  an  old  deserted  place,  yet  not  so  long  deserted  but 
that  traces  of  the  splendour  of  past  inmates  were  everywhere  35 
apparent.  Its  furniture  was  still,  standing  —  even  to  the  tar- 
nished gilt  leather  battledores,  and  crumbling  feathers  of  shut- 
tlecocks in  the  nursery,  which  told  that  children  had  once  played 
there.     But  I  was  a  lonely  child,  and  had  the  range  at  will  of 


188  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

every  apartment,  knew  every  nook  and  corner,  wondered  and 
worshipped  everywhere. 

The  solitude  of  childhood  is  not  so  much  the  mother  of 
thouglit  as  it  is  the  feeder  of  love,  and  silence,  and  admiration. 
5  So  strange  a  passion  for  the  place  possessed  me  in  those  years, 
that,  though  there  lay  —  I  shame  to  say  how  few  roods  distant 
from  the  mansion  —  half  liid  by  trees,  what  I  judged  some 
romantic  lake,  such  was  the  spell  which  bound  me  to  the  house, 
and  such  my  carefulness  not  to  pass  its  strict  and  proper  pre- 

lOcincts,  that  the  idle  waters  lay  unexplored  for  me;  and  not  till 
late  in  life,  curiosity  prevailing  over  elder  devotion,  I  found,  to 
my  astonishment,  a  pretty  brawling  brook  had  been  the  Lacus 
Incognitus  of  my  infancy.  Variegated  views,  extensive  pros- 
pects—  and  those  at  no  great  distance  from  the  house  —  1  was 

15  told  of  such — what  were  they  to  me,  being  out  of  the  boun- 
daries of  my  Eden? — So  far  from  a  wish  to  roam,  I  would 
have  drawn,  methought,  still  closer  the  fences  of  my  chosen 
prison  ;  and  have  been  hemmed  in  by  a  yet  securer  cincture  of 
those  excluding  garden  walls.    I  could  have  exclaimed  with  the 

20  garden-loving  poet°  — 

Bind  me,  ye  woodbines,  in  your  twines; 
Curl  me  about,  ye  gadding  vines; 
And  oh  so  close  3  our  circles  lace, 
That  I  may  never  leave  this  place ; 
cr  But,  lest  your  fetters  prove  too  weak, 

"^  Ere  I  your  silken  bondage  break, 

Do  you,  O  brambles,  chain  me  too. 
And,  courteous  briars,  nail  me  through. 

I  was  here  as  in  a  lonely  temple.  Snug  firesides  —  the  low- 
;;o  built  roof  —  parlours  ten  'feet  by  ten  —  frugal  boards,  and  all 
the  homehness  of  home — these  were  the  condition  of  my 
birth  —  the  wholesome  soil  which  I  was  planted  in.  Yet,  with- 
out impeachment  to  their  tenderest  lessons,  I  am  not  sorry  to 
have  had  glances  of  something  beyond ;  and  to  have  taken,  if 
35  but  a  peep,  in  childhood,  at  the  contrasting  accidents  of  a  great 
fortune. 

To  have  the  feeling  of  gentility,  it  is  not  necessary  to  have  been 
born  gentle.  The  pride  of  ancestry  may  be  had  on  cheaper 
terms  than  to  be  obliged  to  an  importunate  race  of  ancestors  ; 


BLAEESMOOR    m   II SHIRE  189 

and  the  coatless  antiquary  in  his  uneniblazoned  cell,  revolving 
the  long  line  of  a  Mowbray's  or  De  Clifford's  pedigree,  at  those 
sounding  names  may  warm  himself  into  as  gay  a  vanity  as 
those  who  do  inherit  them.  The  claims  of  birth  are  ideal 
merely,  and  what  herald  shall  go  about  to  strip  me  of  an  idea  ?  5 
Is  it  trenchant  to  their  swords  ?  can  it  be  hacked  off  as  a  spur 
can  ?  or  torn  away  like  a  tarnished  garter  ? 

What,  else,  were  the  families  of  the  great  to  us  ?  what  pleasure 
should  we  take  in  their  tedious  genealogies,  or  their  capitulatory 
brass  monuments  ?     What  to  us  the  uninterrupted  current  of  10 
their  bloods,  if  our  own  did  not  answer  within  us  to  a  cognate 
and  correspondent  elevation? 

Or  wherefore,  else,  O  tattered  and  diminished  'Scutcheon 
that  hung  upon  the  time-worn  walls  of  thy  princely  stairs, 
Blakesmoor!  have  I  in  childhood  so  oft  stood  poring  upon  15 
thy  mystic  characters  —  thy  emblematic  supporters,  witli  their 
prophetic  "  Resurgara  "° —  till,  every  dreg  of  peasantry  purging 
off,  I  received  into  myself  Very  Gentility?  Thou  wert  first  in 
my  morning  eyes;  and  of  nights,  hast  detained  my  steps  from 
bedw^ard,  till  it  was  but  a  step  from  gazing  at  thee  to  dream-  20 
ing  on  thee. 

This  is  the  only  true  gentry  by  adoption  ;  the  veritable  change 
of  blood,  and  not  as  empirics  have  fabled,  by  transfusion. 

Who  it  was  by  dying  tliat  had  earned  the  splendid  trophy,  I 
know  not,   1  inquired  not;    but  its   fading  rags,   and  colours 25 
cobweb-stained,    told   that   its    subject   was   of    two    centuries 
back. 

And  what  if  my  ancestor  at  that  date  was  some  Dama?tas,  -— 
feeding  flocks,  not  his  own,  upon  the  hills  of  Lincoln  —  did  I  in 
less  earnest  vindicate  to  myself  the  family  trappings  of  this  30 
once  proud  ^gon°?  repaying  by  a  backward  triumph  the 
insults  he  might  possibly  have  heaped  in  his  life-time  upon  my 
poor  pastoral  progenitor. 

If  it  were  presumption  so  to  speculate,  the  present  owners  of 
the  mansion  had  least   reason  to  complain.     They  had   long 35 
forsaken  the  old  house  of  their  fathers  for  a  newer  trifle ;  and  I 
was  left  to  appropriate  to  myself  what  images  I  could  pick  up, 
to  raise  my  fancy,  or  to  soothe  my  vanity. 

I  was  the  true  descendant  of  those  old  W s*^;  and  not  the 


190  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

present  family  of  that  name,  who   had    fled    the    old  waste 
places. 

Mine  was  that  gallery  of  good  old  family  portraits,  which  as 
I  have  gone  over,  giving  them  in  fancy  my  own  family  name, 

5  0116 — and  then  another  —  wonld  seem  to  smile,  reaching  for- 
ward from  the  canvas,  to  recognise  the  new  relationship  ;  while 
the  rest  looked  grave,  as  it  seemed,  at  the  vacancy  in  their 
dwelling,  and  thoughts  of  fled  posterity. 

That  Beauty,  with  the  cool  blue  pastoral  drapery,  and  a  lamb  — 

10  that  hung  next  the  great  bay  window  —  with  the  bright  yellow 

II sliire  hair,  and  eye  of  watchet  hue  —  so  like  my  Alice° ! 

—  I  am  persuaded  she  was  a  true  Elia  —  Mildred  Elia,  I  take  it. 

Mine  too,  Blakesmoor,  was  thy  noble  Marble  Hall,  with  its 

mosaic  pavements,  and  its  Twelve  Caesars  —  stately  busts  in 

15  marble  —  ranged  round  :  of  whose  countenances,  young  reader 
of  faces  as  I  was,  the  frowning  beauty  of  ISTero.  I  remember, 
had  most  of  my  wonder;  but  the  mild  Galba  had  my  love. 
There  they  stood  in  the  coldness  of  death,  yet  freshness  of 
immortality.     Mine  too,  thy  lofty  Justice  Hall,  with  its  one 

20  chair  of  authority,  high-backed  and  wickered,  once  the  terror 
of  luckless  poacher,  or  self-forgetful  maiden  —  so  common 
since,  that  bats  have  roosted  in  it. 

Mine  too,  —  whose  else?  —  thy  costly  fruit-garden,  with  its 
sun-baked  southern  wall;    the  ampler  pleasure-garden,  rising 

25  backwards  from  the  house  in  triple  terraces,  with  flower-pots 
now  of  palest  lead,  save  that  a  speck  here  and  there,  saved  from 
the  elements,  bespake  their  pristine  state  to  have  been  gilt  and 
glittering ;  the  verdant  quarters  backwarder  still ;  and,  stretch- 
ing still  beyond,  in   old   formality,  thy  firry  wilderness,  the 

30  haunt  of  the  squirrel,  and  the  day-long  murmuring  wood-pigeon, 
with  that  antique  image  in  the  centre,  God  or  Goddess  I  wist 
not ;  but  child  of  Athens  or  old  Rome  paid  never  a  sincerer 
worship  to  Pan  or  to  Sylvanns°  in  their  native  groves,  than  I 
to  that  fragmental  mystery. 

35  ^  Was  it  for  this,  that  I  kissed  my  childish  hands  too  fervently 
in  your  idol-worship,  walks  and  windings  of  Blakesmoor!  for 
this,  or  what  sin  of  mine,  has  the  plough  passed  over  your 
pleasant  places  ?  I  sometimes  think  that  as  men,  when  they 
die,  do  not  die  all,  so  of  their  extinguished  habitations  there 
may  be  a  hope —  a  germ  to  be  revivified. 


POOR    RELATIONS  191 


POOR  RELATIONS 


A  Poor  Relation  —  is  the  most  irrelevant  thing  in  natnre, — 
a  piece  of  impertinent  correspondency, — an  odious  approxima- 
tion, —  a  haunting  conscience,  —  a  preposterous  shadow,  length- 
ening in  the  noon-tide  of  your  prosperity, —  an  nnwelcome 
remembrancer,  —  a  perpetually  recurring  mortification,  —  as 
drain  on  your  purse,  —  a  more  intolerable  dun  upon  your  pride, 

—  a  drawback  upon  success,  —  a  rebuke  to  your  rising,  —  a 
stain  in  your  blood,  —  a  blot  on  your  'scutcheon,  —  a  rent  in 
your  garment,  —  a  death's  head  at  your  banquet, —  Agathocles' 
pot,° —  a  Mordecai  in  your  gate,° —  a  Lazarus  at  your  door,° — 10 
a  lion  in  your  path,° —  a  frog  in  your  chamber," —  a  fly  in  your 
ointment,"  —  a  mote  in  your  eye," —  a  triumph  to  your  enemy, 

—  an  apology  to  your  friends,  —  the  one  thing  not  needful, — 
the  hail  in  harvest,  —  the  ounce  of  sour  in  a  pound  of  sweet. 

He  is  known  by  his  knock.     Your  heart  telleth  you  "  That  is  15 

Mr. ."      A   rap,   between    familiarity    and    respect ;    that 

demands,  and  at  the  same  time  seems  to  despair  of,  entertain- 
ment. He  entereth  smiling,  and  —  embarrassed.  He  holdeth 
out  his  hand  to  you  to  shake,  and  —  draweth  it  back  again. 
He  casually  looketh  in  about  dinner-time  —  when  the  table  is  20 
full.  He  offereth  to  go  away,  seeing  you  have  company  —  but 
is  induced  to  stay.  He  fillelh  a  chair,  and  your  visitor's  two 
children  are  accommodated  at  a  side-table.  He  never  cometh 
upon  open  days,  when  your  wife  says,  with  some  complacency, 

"  My  dear,  perhaps  ]\Ir. will  drop  in  to-day."     He  remem-  25 

bereth  birth-days  —  and  professeth  he  is  fortunate  to  have 
stumbled  upon  one.  He  declareth  against  fish,  the  turbot  being 
small  —  yet  suffereth  himself  to  be  importuned  into  a  slice 
against  his  first  resolution.  He  sticketh  by  the  port  —  yet  will 
be  prevailed  upon  to  empty  the  remainder  glass  of  claret,  if  a  30 
stranger  press  it  upon  him.  He  is  a  puzzle  to  the  servants,  who 
are  fearful  of  being  too  obsequious,  or  not  civil  enough,  to  him. 
The  guests  think  "  they  have  seen  him  before."  Every  one 
speculateth  upon  his  condition;  and  the  most  part  take  him  to 
be  a  —  tide-waiter.  He  calleth  you  by  your  Christian  name,  to  35 
imply  that  his  other  is  the  same  with  your  own.     He  is  too 


192  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

familiar  by  half,  yet  you  wish  lie  had  less  diffidence.  With 
half  the  faniiliarity  he  might  pass  for  a  casual  dependant;  with 
more  boldness  he  would  be  in  no  danger  of  being  taken  for 
what  he  is.  He  is  too  humble  for  a  friend,  yet  taketh  on  him 
5  more  state  than  befits  a  client.  He  is  a  worse  guest  than  a 
country  tenant,  inasmuch  as  he  bringeth  up  no  rent — yet  'tis 
odds,  from  his  garb  and  demeanour,  that  your  guests  take  him 
for  one.  He  is  asked  to  make  one  at  the  whist  table  ;  ref useth 
on  the  score  of  poverty,  and  —  resents  being  left  out.     When 

10  the  company  break  up,  he  proffereth  to  go  for  a  coach  —  and 
lets  the  servant  go.  He  recollects  your  grandfather;  and  will 
thrust  in  some  mean  and  quite  unimportant  anecdote  —  of  the 
family.  He  knew  it  when  it  was  not  quite  so  flourishing  as 
"  he  is  blest  in  seeing  it  now."     He  reviveth  past  situations,  to 

15  institute  what  he  calleth  —  favourable  comparisons.  With  a 
reflecting  sort  of  congratulation,  he  will  inquire  the  price  of 
your  furniture;  and  insults  you  with  a  special  commendation  of 
your  window-curtains.  He  is  of  opinion  that  the  urn  is  the  more 
elegant   shape ;    but,    after    all,    there    was    something    more 

20  comfortable  about  the  old  tea-kettle  —  which  you  must  remem- 
ber. He  dare  say  you  must  find  a  great  convenience  in  having 
a  carriage  of  your  own,  and  appealeth  to  your  lady  if  it  is  not 
so.  In  quire  th  if  you  have  had  your  arms  done  on  vellum  yet; 
and  did  not  know  till  lately,  that  such-and-such  had  been  the 

25  crest  of  the  family.      His  memory  is  unseasonable  ;  his  com- 

plinients  perverse ;    his  talk  a  trouble ;  his  stay  pertinacious  ; 

and  when  he  goeth  away,  you  dismiss  his  chair  into  a  corner  as 

precipitately  as  possible,  and  feel  fairly  rid  of  two  nuisances. 

There  is  a  worse  evil  under  the  sun,  and  that  is — a  female 

;^3  Poor  Relation.  You  may  do  something  with  the  other;  you 
niay  pass  him  off  tolerably  well ;  but  your  indigent  she-relativp 
is  hopeless.  "He  is  an  old  humorist,"  you  may  say,  '-anl 
affects  to  go  threadbare.  His  circumstances  ar€  better  than 
folks  would  take  them  to  be.     You  are  fond  of  having  a  Char- 

35  acter  at  your  table,  and  truly  he  is  one."  But  in  the  indications 
of  female  poverty  there  can  be  no  disguise.  No  woman  dresses 
below   herself   from   caprice.       The  truth    must   out   without 

shuffling.  "  She  is  plainly  related  to  the  L 's ;  or  what  does  she 

at  their  house  ?  "     She  is,  in  all  probability,  your  wife's  cousin. 


POOR    RELATIONS  193 

Nine  times  out  of  ten,  at  least,  this  is  the  case.  Her  garb  is 
something  between  a  gentlewoman  and  a  beggar,  yet  the 
former  evidently  predominates.  She  is  most  provokingly 
humble,  and  ostentatiously  sensible  to  her  inferiority.  He 
may  require  to  be  repressed  sometimes  —  aliquando  suffiaminandus  5 
eraf  —  but  there  is  no  raising  her.  You  send  her  soup  at 
dinner,    and   she   begs   to   be    lielped  —  after   the   gentlemen. 

Mr.  requests  the  honour  of   taking  wine  with  her ;    she 

hesitates  between  Port  and  Madeira,  and  chooses  the  former  — 
because  he  does.     She  calls  the  Servant  Sir :  and  insists  on  not  10 
troubling  him  to  hold  her  plate.     The  housekeeper  patronises 
her.     The  children's  governess  takes  upon   her  to  correct  her, 
w^hen  she  has  mistaken  the  piano  for  a  harpsichord. 

Richard  Amlet,  Esq.,  in  the  play,  is  a  notable  instance  of  the 
disadvantages  to  which  this  chimerical  notion  of  ajfiniiy  con- 15 
stitutmci  a  claim  to  acquaintance,  may  subject  the  spirit  of  a 
gentleman.  A  little  foolish  blood  is  all  that  is  betwixt  him 
and  a  lady  with  a  great  estate.  His  stars  are  perpetually 
crossed  by  the  malignant  maternity  of  an  old  woman,  who 
persists  in  calling  him  "her  son  Dick."  But  she  has  where- 20 
withal  in  the  end  to  recompense  his  indignities,  and  float  him 
again  upon  the  brilliant  surface,  under  which  it  had  been  her 
seeming  business  and  pleasure  all  along  to  sink  him.  All  men, 
besides,  are  not  of  Dick's  temperament.  I  knew  an  Amlet  in 
real  life,  who,  wanting  Dick's  buoyancy,   sank  indeed.     Poor  25 

W was  of  my  own  standing  at  Christ's,  a  fine  classic,  and 

a  youth  of  promise.  If  he  had  a  blemish,  it  was  too  much 
pride  ;  but  its  quality  was  inoffensive  ;  it  was  not  of  that  sort 
which  hardens  the  heart,  and  serves  to  keep  inferiors  at  a 
distance  ;  it  only  sought  to  w^ard  off  derogation  from  itself.  It  30 
was  the  principle  of  self-respect  carried  as  far  as  it  could  go, 
without  infringing  upon  that  respect  which  he  would  have 
every  one  else  equally  maintain  for  himself.  He  would  have 
you  to  think  alike  with  him  on  this  topic.  Many  a  quarrel 
have  I  had  with  him,  when  we  were  rather  older  boys,  and  our  35 
tallness  made  us  more  obnoxious  to  observation  in  the  blue 
clothes,  because  I  would  not  thread  the  alleys  and  blind  w^ays 
of  the  town  with  him  to  elude  notice,  when  we  have  been 
out  together  on  a  holiday  in  the  streets  of  this  sneering  and 
o 


194  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

prying  metropolis.     AV went,  sore  with  these  notions,  to 

Oxfoi-d,  where  the  dignity  and  sweetness  of  a  scholar's  life, 
meeting  with  the  alloy  of  a  humble  introduction,  wrought  in 
him  a  passionate  devotion  to  the  place,  with  a  profound  aversion 

5  from  the  society.  The  servitor's  gown  (worse  than  his  school 
array)  clung  to  him  with  Nessian  venom.°  He  thought  him- 
self "ridiculous  in  a  garb,  under  which  Latimer°  must  have 
walked  erect,  and  in  which  Hooker,  in  his  young  days,  pos- 
sibly flaunted  in  a  vein  of  no  discommendable  vanity.     In  the 

10  depth  of  college  shades,  or  in  his  lonely  chamber,  the  poor 
student  shrunk  from  observation.  He  found  shelter  among 
books,  which  insult  not ;  and  studies,  that  ask  no  questions  of 
a  youth's  finances.  He  was  lord  of  his  library,  and  seldom 
cared  for   looking   out  beyond   his   domains.       The    healing 

15  intluence  of  studious  pursuits  was  upon  him  to  soothe  and  to 
abstract.  He  was  almost  a  healthy  man ;  when  the  wayward- 
ness of  his  fate  broke  out  against   him    a   second  and  worse 

malignity.     The  father  of  AV had  hitherto  exercised  the 

hiiinl)le    profession  of    house-painter,   at  X ,  near    Oxford. 

20  A  supposed  interest  with  some  of  the  heads  of  colleges  had  now 
induced  him  to  take  up  his  abode  in  that  city,  with  the  hope  of 
being  employed  upon  some  public  works  which  were  talked  of. 
From  that  moment  I  read  in  the  countenance  of  the  young 
man,   the    determination    which    at    length    tore    him   from 

25  academical  pursuits  for  ever.  To  a  person  unacquainted  witli 
our  Universities,  the  distance  between  the  gownsmen  and 
the  townsmen,  as  they  are  called  —  the  trading  part  of  the 
latter  especially  —  is  carried  to  an  excess  that  would  appear 
liarsh  and  incredible.     The  temperament  of  W 's  father  was 

30  diametrically  the  reverse. of  his  own.     Old  W was  a  little, 

busy,  cringing  tradesman,  who,  with  his  son  upon  his  arm, 
would  stand  bowing  and  scraping,  cap  in  hand,  to  anything  that 
wore  the  semblance  of  a  gown  —  insensible  to  the  winks  and 
opener  remonstrances  of   the  young  man,  to  whose  chamber- 

35  fellow,  or  equal  in  standing,  perhaps,  he  was  thus  obsequiously 
and  gratuitously  ducking.     Such  a  state  of  things  could  not 

last.     W must  change  the  air  of  Oxford,  or  be  suffocated. 

He  chose  the  former;  and  let  the  sturdy  moralist,  who  strains 
the  point  of  the  filial  duties  as  high  as  they  can  bear,  censure 


POOR    RELATIONS  195 

the  dereliction  ;  he  cannot  estimate  the  struggle.     I  stood  with 

W ,  the  last  afternoon  I  ever  saw  him,  under  the  eaves  of 

his  paternal  dwelling.     It  was  in  the  fine  lane  leading  from  the 

High-street  to  the  back  of    *****  college,   where    W 

kept  his  rooms.  He  seemed  thoughtful  and  more  reconciled.  5 
I  ventm-ed  to  rally  him  —  finding  him  in  a  better  mood  —  upon 
a  representation  of  the  Artist  Evangelist,  which  the  old  man, 
whose  affairs  were  beginning  to  flourish,  had  caused  to  be  set 
up  in  a  splendid  sort  of  frame  over  his  really  handsome  shop, 
eithei'  as  a  token  of  prosperity  or  badge  of  gratitude    to  his  10 

saint.     W looked  up  at  the  Luke,  and,  like  Satan,  "  knew 

his  mounted  sign  —  and  fled."  A  letter  on  his  father's  table, 
tlie  next  morning,  announced  that  he  had  accepted  a  commis- 
sion in  a  regiment  about  to  embark  for  Portugal.  He  was 
among  the  first  who  perished  before  the  walls  of  St.  Sebastian.°  15 

I  do  not  know  how,  upon  a  subject  which  I  began  with  treat- 
ing half  seriously,  I  should  have  fallen  upon  a  recital  so  emi- 
nently painful ;  but  this  theme  of  poor  relationship  is  replete 
with  so  much  matter  for  tragic  as  well  as  comic  associations, 
that  it  is  difficult  to  keep  the  account  distinct  without  blending.  20 
The  earliest  impressions  which  I  received  on  this  matter  are 
certainly  not  attended  with  anything  painful,  or  very  humili- 
ating, in  the  recalling.  At  my  father's  table  (no  very  splendid 
one)  was  to  be  founcl,  every  Saturday,  the  mysterious  figure  of 
an  aged  gentleman,  clothed  in  neat  black,  of  a  sad  yet  comely  25 
appearance.  His  deportment  was  of  the  essence  of  gravity ;  his 
words  few  or  none ;  and  I  was  not  to  make  a  noise  in  his 
presence.  I  had  little  inclination  to  have  done  so  —  for  my 
cue  was  to  admire  in  silence.  A  particular  elbow-chair  was 
appropriated  to  him,  w^hich  was  in  no  case  to  be  violated.  A  30 
peculiar  sort  of  sweet  pudding,  which  appeared  on  no  other 
occasion,  distinguished  the  days  of  his  coming.  I  used  to 
think  him  a  prodigiously  rich  man.  All  I  could  make  out  of 
him  was,  that  he  and  my  father  had  been  schoolfellows,  a  world 
ago  at  Lincoln,  and  that  he  came  from  the  Mint.  The  Mint  1 35 
knew  to  be  a  place  where  all  the  money  was  coined  —  and  I 
thought  he  was  the  owner  of  all  that  money.  Awful  ideas  of 
the  Tower  twined  themselves  about  his  presence.  He  seemed 
above  human  infirmities  and  passions.     A  sort  of  melancholy 


196  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 

grandeur  invested  him.  From  some  inexplicable  doom  I  fancied 
him  obliged  to  go  about  in  an  eternal  suit  of  mourning ;  a 
captive  —  a  stately  being,  let  out  of  the  Tower  on  Saturdays. 
Often  have  I  wondered  at  the  temerity  of  my  father,  who,  in 
5  spite  of  an  habitual  general  respect  which  we  all  in  common 
manifested  towards  him,  would  venture  now  and  then  to  stand 
up  against  him  in  some  argument  touching  their  youthful 
days.  The  houses  of  the  ancient  city  of  Lincoln  are  divided 
(as  most  of  my  readers  know)  between  the  dwellers  on  the  hill 

10  and  in  the  valley.  This  marked  distinction  formed  an  obvious 
division  between  the  boys  who  lived  above  (however  brought 
together  in  a  common  school)  and  the  boys  whose  paternal 
residence  was  on  the  plain ;  a  sufficient  cause  of  hostility  in 
the  code  of   these  young    Grotiuses.°     My  father  had   been  a 

15 leading  Mountaineer;  and  would  still  maintain  the  general 
superiority,  in  skill  and  hardihood,  of  the  Above  Boys  (his  own 
faction)  over  the  Below  Boys  (so  were  they  called),  of  which 
party  his  contemporary  had  been  a  chieftain.  Many  and  hot 
were  the  skirmishes  on  this  topic — the  only  one  upon  which 

20  the  old  gentleman  was  ever  brought  out —  and  bad  blood  bred ; 
even  sometimes  almost  to  the  recommencement  (so  I  expected) 
of  actual  hostilities.  But  my  father,  who  scorned  to  insist  upon 
advantages,  generally  contrived  to  turn  the  conversation  upon 
some  adroit  by-commendation  of  the  old  ^linster  ;  in  the  general 

25  preference  of  which,  before  all  other  cathedrals  in  the  "island, 
the  dweller  on  the  hill,  and  the  plain-born,  could  meet  on  a 
conciliating  level,  and  lay  down  their  less  important  differences. 
Once  only  I  saw  the  old  gentleman  really  ruffled,  and  I  remem- 
bered with  anguish  the  thought  that  came  over  me  :  "  Perhaps 

30  he  will  never  come  here  again."  He  had  been  pressed  to  take 
another  plate  of  the  viand,  which  I  have  already  mentioned  as 
the  indispensable  concomitant  of  his  visits.  He  had  refused 
with  a  resistance  amounting  to  rigour,  when  my  aunt,  an  old 
Lincolnian,  but  who  had  something  of  this,  in  common  with 

35  my  cousin  Bridget,  that  she  would  sometimes  press  civility  out 
of  season  —  uttered  the  following  memorable  application  — ''  Do 
take  another  slice,  Mr.  Billet,  for  you  do  not  get  pudding  every 
day."  The  old  gentleman  said  nothing  at  the  time  — but  he 
took  occasion  in  the  course  of  the  evening,  when  some  argu- 


DETACHED    THOUGHTS   ON  BOOKS   AND   READING     197 

iiieiit  had  intervened  between  them,  to  utter  with  an  emphasis 
which  chilled  the  company,  and  which  chills  me  now  as  I  write 
it — "Woman,  you  are  superannuated."  John  Billet  did  not 
survive  long,  after  the  digesting  of  this  affront;  but  he  sur- 
vived long  enough  to  assure  me  that  peace  was  actually  re- 5 
stored !  and,  if  I  remember  aright,  another  pudding  was 
discreetly  substituted  in  the  place  of  that  which  had  occasioned 
the  offence.  He  died  at  the  Mint  (Anno  1781)  where  he  had 
long  held,  what  he  accounted,  a  comfortable  independence ;  and 
with  five  pounds,  fourteen  shillings,  and  a  j)enny,  M'hich  were  10 
found  in  his  escritoir  after  his  decease,  left  the  world,  blessing 
God  that  he  had  enough  to  bury  him,  and  that  he  had  never 
been  obliged  to  any  man  for  a  sixpence.  This  was  —  a  Poor 
Relation. 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON    BOOKS  AND  READING 

To  mind  the  inside  of  a  book  is  to  entertain  one's  self  with  the  15 
forced  product  of  another  man's  brain.    Now  I  think  a  man  of  quality 
and  breeding  may  be  much  amused  with  tlie  natural  sprouts  of  his 
own.  —  Lord  Foppington,  in  The  Relapse."^ 

Ax  ingenious  acquaintance  of  my  own  was  so  much  struck 
with  this  bright  sally  of  his  Lordship,  that  he  has  left  off  read- 20 
ing  altogether,  to  the  great  improvement  of  his  originality. 
At  the  hazard  of  losing  some  credit  on  this  head,  I  must  con- 
fess that  I  dedicate  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  my  time  to  other 
people's  thoiTghts.  I  dream  away  my  life  in  others'  specula- 
tions. I  love  to  lose  myself  in  other  men's  minds.  When  I  am  25 
not  walking,  T  am  reading;  I  cannot  sit  and  think.  Books 
think  for  me. 

I  have  no  repugnances.     Shaftesbury°  is  not  too  genteel  for 
me,  nor  Jonathan  Wild°  too  low.     I  can  read  anything  which  I 
call  a  hook.     There  are  things  in  that  shape  which  I  cannot  30 
allow  for  such. 

In  this  catalogue  of  honks  ichlch  are  no  hooks — hlhlia  a-hiblla 
—  I  reckon  Court  Calendars,  Directories,  Pocket  Books,  Draught 
Boards  bound  and  lettered  on  the  back,  Scientific   Treatises, 


198  THE   ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

Almanacks,  Statutes  at  Large ;  the  works  of  Hume,  Gibbon,^ 
Robertson,"  Beattie,  Soame  Jeuyns,  and  generally,  all  those 
volumes  which '•  no  gentleman's  library  should  be  without;" 
the    Histories  of   Flavius  Josephus°  (that  learned  Jew),    and 

5  Paley's  Moral  Philosophy.  With  these  excej^tions,  I  can  read 
almost  anything.  I  bless  my  stars  for  a  taste  so  catholic,  so 
unexcluding. 

1  confess  that  it  moves  my  spleen  to  see  these  things  hi  bools' 
clothing  perched  upon  shelves,  like  false  saints,  usurpers  of  true 

10  shrines,  intruders  into  the  sanctuarv,  thrusting  out  the  legiti- 
mate occupants.  To  reach  down  a  well-bound  semblance  of  a 
volume,  and  hope  it  some  kind-hearted  play-book,  then,  opening 
what  ''  seem  its  leaves,"  to  come  bolt  upon  a  withering  Popu- 
lation Essay.     To  expect  a  Steele  or  a  Farquhar,  and  find  — 

15  Adam  Smith. °  To  view  a  well-arranged  assortment  of  block- 
headed  Encyclopaedias  (Angiicanas  or  Metropolitanas)  set  out 
in  an  array  of  Russia,  or  Morocco,  when  a  tithe  of  that  good 
leather  would  comfortably  re-cJothe  my  shivering  folios ;  would 
renovate  Paracelsus"  himself,  and  enable  old  Raymund  Lully  to 

20  look  like  himself  again  in  the  world.  I  never  see  these  impos- 
tors, but  I  long  to  strip  them,  to  warm  my  ragged  veterans  in 
their  spoils. 

To  be  strong-backed  and  neat-bound  is  the  desideratum  of  a 
volume.     Magnificence   comes    after.     This,   when   it    can   be 

25  afforded,  is  not  to  be  lavished  upon  all  kinds  of  books  indiscrimi- 
nately. I  would  not  dress  a  set  of  Magazines,  for  instance,  in 
full  suit.  The  dishabille,  or  half-bindtng  (with  Russia  backs 
ever)  is  our  costume.  A  Shakspeare,  or  a  Milton  (unless  the 
first  editions),  it  were  mere  foppery  to  trick  out  in  gay  apparel. 

30  The  possession  of  them  confers  no  distinction.  The  exterior  of 
them  (the  things  themselves  being  so  common),  strange  to  say, 
raises  no  sweet  emotions,  no  tickling  sense  of  property  in  the 
owner.  Thomson's  Seasons,  again,  looks  best  (I  maintain  it)  a 
little  torn  and  dog's-eared.     How  beautiful  to  a  genuine  lover 

35  of  reading  aie  the  sullied  leaves,  and  woi-n-out  appearance,  nay, 
the  very  odour  (beyond  Russia)  if  we  would  not  forget  kind 
feelings  in  fastidiousness,  of  an  old  "Circulating  Librarv " 
Tom  Jones,  or  Yicar  of  Wakefield" !  How  they  speak  of  the 
thousand  thumbs  that  have  turned  over  their  pages  with  delight ! 


DETACHED   THOUGHTS   ON  BOOKS  AND   READING     199 

'  —  of  the  lone  sempstress,  whom  they  may  have  cheered  (mil- 
;  liner,  or  harder-working  mantna-maker)  after  her  long  day's 
needle-toil,  rnnning  far  into  midnight,  when  she  has  snatched 
an  hour,  ill  spared  from  sleep,  to  steep  her  cares,  as  in  some 
Lethean  cup,  in  spelling  out  their  enchanting  contents!  Who 5 
would  have  them  a  whit  less  soiled?  What  better  condition 
could  we  desire  to  see  them  in? 

In  some  respects  the  better  a  book  is,  the  less  it  demands 
from  binding.  Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  and  all  that  class 
of  perpetually  v'lf -reproductive  volumes — Great  Nature's  Ster- 10 
eotypes  —  we  see  them  individually  perish  with  less  regret,  be- 
cause we  know  the  copies  of  them  to  be  "  eterne."  But  where 
a  book  is  at  once  both  good  and  rare  —  where  the  individual  is 
almost  the  species,  and  when  that  perishes, 

We  know  not  where  is  that  Promethean  torch     .  15 

That  can  its  light  relumiue ;  — 

such  a  book,  for  instance,  as  the  Life  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle, 
by  his  Duchess — no  casket  is  rich  enough,  no  casing  sufficiently 
durable,  to  honour  and  keep  safe  such  a  jewel. 

Not  only  rare  volumes  of  this  description,  which  seem  hope- 20 
less  ever  to  be  reprinted;  but  old  editions  of  writers,  such  as 
Sir  Philip  Sydney,  Bishop  Taylor,°  Milton  in  his  prose  works, 
Fuller  —  of  whom  we  liave  reprints,  yet  the  books  themselves, 
though  they  go  about,  and  are  talked  of  here  and  there,  we 
know  have  not  endenizened  themselves  (nor  possibly  ever  will)  25 
in  the  national  heart,  so  as  to  become  stock  books — it  is  good 
to  possess  these  in  durable  and  costly  covers.     T  do  not  care  for 
a   First   Folio   of    Shakspeare.°     I   rather  prefer  the  common 
editions  of  Rowe  and  Tonson,  without  notes,  and  with  plates, 
which,  being  so  execrably  bad,  serve  as  maps  or  modest  remein-30 
brancers,  to  the  text ;  and  without  pretending  to  any  supposable 
emulation  watli  it,  are  so  much  better  than  the  Shakspeare  gal- 
lery  engravings,   which   did.     I  have  a  community    of  feeling 
with  my  countrymen  about  his  Plays,  and  I  like  those  editions 
3f   him    best   which    have   been    oftenest   tumbled    about  and  35 
handled.  —  On    the   contrary,    I   cannot  read    Beaumont°   and 
Fletcher"   but   in    Folio.     The  Octavo  editions  are  painful  to 
look   at.     I  have  no  sympathy  with  them.     If  they  were    as 


200  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

much  read  as  the  current  editions  of  the  other  poet,  I  should 
prefer  them  in  that  shape  to  the  older  one.  I  do  not  know  a 
more  heartless  sight  than  the  reprint  of  the  Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly. AVliat  need  was  there  of  unearthing  the  bones  of  that 
5  fantastic  old  great  man,  to  expose  them  in  a  winding-sheet  of 
the  newest  fashion  to  modern  censure  ?  what  hapless  stationer 
could  dream  of  Burtou  ever  becoming  popular? — The  wretched 
Maloiie  could  not  do  worse,  when  he  bribed  the  sexton  of  Strat- 
ford  church   to   let  him  whitewash  the  painted  effigy  of   old 

10  Shakspeare,  which  stood  there,  in  rude  but  livoly  fashion  de- 
picted, to  the  very  colour  of  the  cheek,  the  eye,  the  eyebrow, 
hair,  the  very  dress  he  used  to  wear  —  the  only  authentic  testi- 
mony we  had,  however  imperfect,  of  these  curious  parts  and 
parcels  of  him.     They  covered  him  over  with  a  coat  of  white 

15  paint.  By ■,  if  I  had  been  a  justice  of  peace  for  Warwick- 
shire, I  would  have  clapped  both  commentator  and  sexton  fast 
in  the  stocks,  for  a  pair  of  meddling  sacrilegious  varlets. 

I  think  I  see  them  at  their  work  —  these  sapient  trouble- 
tombs. 

20  Shall  I  be  thought  fantastical  if  I  confess  that  the  names  of 
some  of  our  poets  sound  sweeter,  and  have  a  finer  relish  to  the 
ear  —  to  mine,  at  least  —  than  that  of  Milton  or  of  Shakspeare  ? 
It  may  be,  that  the  latter  are  more  staled  and  rung  upon  in 
common  discourse.     The  sweetest  names,  and  which  carry  a 

25  perfume  in  the  mention,  are,  Kit  Marlowe,°  Drayton, °  Drum- 
mond  of  IIawthornden,°  and  Cowley. 

]\Iuch  depends  upon  ichen  and  ivhere  you  read  a  book.  In  the 
five  or  six  impatient  minutes,  before  the  dinner  is  quite  ready, 
who  would  think  of  taking  up  the  Fairy  Queen  for  a  stop-gap, 

30  or  a  volume  of  Bishop  An'drewes'  sermons  ? 

Milton  almost  requires  a  solemn  service  of  music  to  be  played 
before  you  enter  upon  him.     But  he  brings  his  music,  to  which, 
who  listens,  had  need  bring  docile  thoughts,  and  purged  ears. 
AVinter  evenings  —  the  world  shut  out  —  with  less  of  cere-. 

35mony  the  gentle  Shakspeare  enters.  At  such  a  season,  the 
Tempest,  or  his  own  Winter's  Tale  — 

These  two  poets  you  cannot  avoid  reading  aloud — to  your- 
self, or  (as  it  chances)  to  some  single  person  listening.  More 
than  one — and  it  degenerates  into  an  audience. 


DETACIIEB   THOUGHTS   ON  BOOKS  AND   BEADING     201 

Books  of  quick  interest,  tliat  hurry  on  for  incidents,  are  for 
the  eye  to  glide  over  only.  It  will  not  do  to  read  them  out.  I 
could^  never  listen  to  even  the  better  kind  of  modern  novels 
without  extreme  irksomeness. 

A  newspaj)er,  read  out,  is  intolerable.     In  some  of  the  Bank  5 
offices  it  is  the  custom  (to  save  so  much  individual  time)  for 
one  of  the  clerks  —  who  is  the  best  scholar  —  to  commence  upon 
the  Times  or  the  Chronicle  and  recite  its  entire  contents  aloud 
pro  bono  publico^     With  every  advantage  of  lungs  and  elocu- 
tion, the  effect   is    singularly  vapid.     In   barbers'    shops   and  10 
public-houses  a  fellow  will  get  up,  and  spell  out  a  paragraph, 
which  he  communicates  as  some  discovery.     Another  follows 
with  his  selection.     So  the  entire  journal  transpires  at  length 
by  piecemeal.     Seldom-readers  are  slow  readers,  and,  without 
this  expedient,  no  one  in  the  company  would   probably  ever  15 
travel  through  the  contents  of  a  whole  paper. 

Newspapers  always  excite  curiosity.  No  one  ever  lays  one 
down  without  a  feeling  of  disappointment. 

What  an  eternal  time  that  gentleman  in  black,  at  Nando's, 
keeps  the  paper  !     I  am  sick  of  hearing  the  waiter  bawling  out  20 
incessant!}^,  "  The  Chrotiicle  is  in  hand,  Sir." 

Coming  into  an  inn  at  night  —  having  ordered  your  supper  — 
what  can  be  more  delightful  than  to  find  lying  in  the  window- 
seat,  left  there  time  out  of  mind  by  the  carelessness  of  some 
former  guest  —  two  or  three  numbers  of   the  old    Town   and  25 
Country  3^Iagazine,  with  its  amusing  tete-a-tete  pictures — "The 

Royal  Lover  and  Lady  G ;  "     "  The  Melting  Platonic  and 

the  old  Beau,"  —  and  such-like  antiquated  scandal  ?  Would  you 
exchange  it  —  at  that  time,  and  in  that  place  —  for  a  better 
book  ?  30 

Poor  Tobin,  who  latterly  fell  blind,  did  not  regret  it  so  much 
for  the  weightier  kinds  of  reading  —  the  Paradise  Lost,  or 
Comus,  he  could  have  read  to  him — but  he  missed  the  pleas- 
ure of  skimming  over  with  his  own  eye  a  magazine,  or  a  light 
pamphlet.  35 

I  should  not  care  to  be  caught  in  the  serious  avenues  of  some 
cathedral  alone,  and  reading  Candide. 

I  do  not  remember  a  more  whimsical  surprise  than  having 
been  once  detected  — by  a  familiar  damsel  —  reclined  at   my 


202  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

ease  upon  the  grass,  on  Primrose  Hill  (her  Cythera)°  reading 
—  Pamela  °  There  was  nothing  in  the  book  to  make  a  man 
seriously  ashamed  at  the  exposure;  but  as  she  seated  herself 
down  by  me,  and  seemed  determined  to  read  in  company,  I 
5  could  have  wished  it  had  been  —  any  other  book.  We  read  on 
very  sociably  for  a  few  pages;  and,  not  finding  the  author 
much  to  her  taste,  she  got  up,  and  —  went  away.  Gentle 
casuist,  I  leave  it  to  thee  to  conjecture,  whether  the  blush  (for 
there  was  one  between  us)  was  the  property  of  the  nymph  or 

10  the  swain  in  this  dilemma.  From  me  you  shall  never  get  the 
secret. 

I  am  not  much  a  friend  to  out-of-doors  reading.  I  cannot 
settle  my  spirits  to  it.  I  knew  a  Unitarian  minister,  who  was 
generally  to  be  seen  upon  Snow-Hill  (as  yet  Skinner's  Street 

15  ivas  not),  between  the  hours  of  ten  and  eleven  in  the  morning, 
studying  a  volume  of  Lardner.  I  own  this  to  have  been  a  strain 
of  abstraction  beyond  my  reach.  I  used  to  admire  how  he 
sidled  along,  keeping  clear  of  secular  contacts.  An  illiterate 
encounter  with  a  porter's  knot,  or  a  bread  basket,  would  have 

20  quickly  put  to  flight  all  the  theology  I  am  master  of,  and  have 
left  me  worse  than  indifferent  to  the  five  points. 

There  is  a  class  of  street  readers,  whom  I  can  never  contem- 
plate without  affection  —  the  poor  gentry,  w^ho,  not  having 
wherewithal  to  buy  or  hire  a  book,  filch  a  little  learning  at 

25  the  open  stalls  —  the  owner,  with  his  hard  eye,  casting  envious 
looks  at  them  all  the  while,  and  thinking  when  they  will  have 
done.  Venturing  tenderly,  page  after  page,  expecting  every 
moment  when  he  shall  interpose  his  interdict,  and  yet  unable 
to  deny  themselves   the   gratification,  they  "snatch  a  fearful 

30  joy."  °     Martin    B ,  in  this  way,   by  daily  fragments,    got 

through  two  volumes  of  Clarissa,  when  the  stall-keeper  damped 
his  laudable  ambition,  by  asking  him  (it  was  in  his  younger 
days)  whether  he  meant  to  purchase  the  w^ork.  M.  declares, 
that  under  no  circumstances  of  his  life  did  he  ever  peruse  a 

;i5  book  with  half  the  satisfaction  which  he  took  in  those  uneasy 
snatches.  A  quaint  poetess°  of  our  day  has  moralised  upon 
this  subject  in  two  very  touching  but  homely  stanzas  :  — 

I  saw  a  boy  with  eager  eye 
Open  a  book  upou  a  stall, 


STAGE    ILLUSION  203 


And  read,  as  he'd  devour  it  all ; 

Which,  when  the  stall-man  did  espy, 

Soon  to  the  boy  I  heard  him  call, 

"  You,  Sir,  you  never  buy  a  book, 

Therefore  in  one  you  shall  not  look."  5 

The  boy  pass'd  slowly  on,  and  with  a  sigh 

He  wish'd  he  never  had  been  taught  to  read, 

Then  of  the  old  churl's  books  he  should  have  had  no  need. 

Of  sufferings  the  poor  have  many, 

Which  never  can  the  rich  annoy.  10 

I  soon  perceived  another  boy. 

Who  look'd  as  if  he  had  not  any 

Food,  for  that  day  at  least  —  enjoy 

The  sight  of  cold  meat  in  a  tavern  larder. 

This  boy's  case,  then  thought  I,  is  surely  harder,  15 

Thus  hungry,  longing,  thus  without  a  penny, 

Beholding  choice  of  dainty-dressed  meat : 

No  wonder  if  he  wish  he  ne'er  had  learn'd  to  eat. 


STAGE   ILLUSION 

A  PLAY  is  said  to  be  well  or  ill  acted,  in  proportion  to  the 
scenical  illusion  produced.     Whether  such  illusion  can  in  any  20 
case  be  perfect,  is  not  the  question.     The  nearest  approach  to 
it,  we  are  told,  is  when  the  actor  appears  wholly  unconscious  of 
the  presence  of  spectators.      In  tragedy  —  in  all  which  is  to 
affect  the  feelings  —  this  undivided  attention  to  his  stage  busi- 
ness seems  indispensable.      Yet  it  is,  in  fact,  dispensed  with  25 
every  day  by  our  cleverest  tragedians ;  and  while  these  references 
to  an  audience,  in  the  shape  of  rant  or  sentiment,  are  not  too 
frequent  or  palpable,  a  sufficient  quantity  of   illusion  for  the 
purposes  of  dramatic  interest  may  be  said  to  be  produced  in 
spite  of  them.     But,  tragedy  apart,  it  may  be  inquired  whether,  30 
in  certain  characters  in  comedy,  especially  those  which  are  a 
little  extravagant,  or  which  involve  some  notion  repugnant  to  the 
moral  sense,  it  is  not  a  proof  of  the  highest  skill  in  the  comedian 
when,  without  absolutely  appealing  to  an  audience,  he  keeps  up 
a  tacit  understanding  with  them ;  and  makes  them,  unconsciously  35 
to  themselves,  a  party  in  the  scene.     The  utmost  nicety  is  re- 


1>(I4  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

quired  in  the  mode  of  doing  this;    but  we  speak  only  of  the 
great  artists  in  the  profession. 

The  most  mortifying  infirmity  ih  human  nature,  to  feel  in 
ourselves,  or  to  contemplate  in  another,  is,  perhaps,  cowardice. 
5  To  see  a  coward  done  to  the  life  upon  a  stage  would  produce  any- 
thing but  mirth.  Yet  we  most  of  us  remember  Jack  Bannister's^' 
cowards.  Could  anything  be  more  agreeable,  more  pleasant? 
We  loved  the  rogues.  How  was  this  effected  but  by  the  ex- 
quisite art  of  the  actor  in  a  perpetual  sub-insinuation  to  us,  the 

10  spectators,  even  in  the  extremity  of  the  shaking  fit,  that  he  was 
not  half  such  a  coward  as  we  took  him  for?  We  saw  all  the 
common  symptoms  of  the  malady  upon  him;  the  quivering  lip, 
the  cowering  knees,  the  teeth  chattering ;  and  could  have  sworn 
"that  man  was  frightened."     But  we  forgot  all  the  vrhile  —  or 

15  kept  it  almost  a  secret  to  ourselves  —  that  he  never  once  lost 
his  self-possession;  that  he  let  out  by  a  thousand  droll  looks 
and  gestures  —  meant  at  m,  and  not  at  all  supi:)osed  to  be  visible 
to  his  fellows  in  the  scene,  that  his  confidence  in  his  own  re- 
sources had  never  once  deserted  him.     Was  this  a  genuine  pic- 

20ture  of  a  coward;  or  not  rather  a  likeness,  which  the  clever 
artist  contrived  to  palm  upon  us  instead  of  an  original ;  while 
we  secretly  connived  at  the  delusion  for  the  purpose  of  greater 
pleasure,  than  a  more  genuine  counterfeiting  of  the  imbecility, 
helplessness,  and  utter  self-desertion,  which  we  know  to  be  con- 

'25comitants  of  cowardice  in  real  life,  could  have  given  us? 

Why  are  misers  so  hateful  in  the  world,  and  so  endurable  on 
the  stage,  but  because  the  skilful  actor,  by  a  sort  of  subrefer- 
ence,  rather  than  direct  appeal  to  .us,  disarms  the  character  of  a 
great  deal  of  its  odiousness,  by  seeming  to  eniiage  our  compas- 

.■><>  sion  for  the  insecure  tenure  by  which  he  holds  his  money-bags 
and  parchments?  By  this  subtle  vent  half  of  the  hatefulness 
of  the  character  —  the  self-closeness  with  which  in  real  life  it 
coils  itself  up  from  the  sympathies  of  men  —  evaporates.  The 
miser  becomes  sympathetic;  i.e.  is  no  genuine   miser.     Here 

;«  again  a  diverting  likeness  is  substituted  for  a  very  disagreeable 
reality. 

Spleen,  irritability  —  the  pitiable  infirmities  of  old  men,  which 
produce  only  pain  to  behold  in  the  realities,  counterfeited  upon 
a  stage,  divert  not  altogether  for  the  comic  appendages  to  them. 


STAGE  ILLVSION  205 

but  in  part  from  an  inner  conviction  that  they  are  being  acted 
before  us ;  that  a  likeness  only  is  going  on,  and  not  the  thing 
itself.  They  please  by  being  done  under  the  life,  or  beside  it ; 
not  to  the  life.  When  Gattie  acts  an  old  man,  is  he  angry  in- 
deed? or  only  a  pleasant  counterfeit,  just  enough  of  a  likeness  5 
to  recognise,  without  pressing  upon  us  the  uneasy  sense  of 
reality  ? 

Comedians,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  may  be  too  natural. 
It  was  the  case  with  a  late  actor.  Nothing  could  be  more 
earnest  or  true  than  the  manner  of  Mr.  Emery;  this  told  excel- 10 
lently  in  his  Tyke,  and  characters  of  a  tragic  cast.  But  when 
he  carried  the  same  rigid  exclusiveness  of  attention  to  the 
stage  business,  and  wilful  blindness  and  oblivion  of  every- 
thing before  the  curtain  into  his  comedy,  it  produced  a  harsh 
and  dissonant  effect.  He  was  out  of  keeping  with  the  rest  of  15 
the  dramatis  personce.  There  was  as  little  link  between  him 
and  them,  as  betwixt  himself  and  the  audience.  He  was  a 
third  estate,  —  dry,  repulsive,  and  unsocial  to  all.  Individually 
considered,  his  execution  was  masterly.  But  comedy  is  not 
this  unbending  thing;  for  this  reason,  that  the  same  degree  of  20 
credibility  is  not  required  of  it  as  to  serious  scenes.  The 
degrees  of  credibility  demanded  to  the  two  things  maybe  illus- 
trated by  the  different  sort  of  truth  which  we  expect  when  a 
man  tells  us  a  mournful  or  a  merry  story.  If  we  suspect  the 
former  of  falsehood  in  any  one  tittle,  we  reject  it  altogether.  25 
Our  tears  refuse  to  flow  at  a  suspected  imposition.  But  the 
teller  of  a  mirthful  tale  has  latitude  allowed  him.  We  are 
content  with  less  than  absolute  truth.  'Tis  the  same  with 
dramatic  illusion.  We  confess  we  love  in  comedy  to  see  an 
audience  naturalised  behind  the  scenes, — taken  in  into  the  30 
interest  of  the  drama,  welcomed  as  bystanders,  however.  There 
is  something  ungracious  in  a  comic  actor  holding  himself  aloof 
from  all  participation  or  concern  with  those  who  are  come  to 
be  diverted  l)y  him.  Macl)eth  must  see  the  dagger,  and  no  ear 
but  his  ow^i  be  told  of  it;  but  an  old  fool  in  farce  may  think  he  35 
sees  sornethinf/,  and  by  conscious  words  and  looks  express  it,  as 
plainly  as  he  can  speak,  to  pit,  box,  and  gallery.  When  an 
impertinent  in  tragedy,  an  Osric,''  for  instance,  breaks  in  upon 
the  serious  passions  of  the  scene,  we  approve  of  the  contempt 


206  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 

with  ^vhich  he  is  treated.  But  when  the  pleasant  impertinent 
of  comedy,  in  a  piece  purely  meant  to  give  delight,  and  raise 
mirth  out  of  whimsical  perplexities,  worries  the  studious  man 
with  taking   up   his  leisure,  or  making  his   house  his  home, 

5  the  same  sort  of  contempt  expressed  (however  natural)  w^ould 
destroy  the  balance  of  delight  in  the  spectators.  To  make  the 
intrusion  comic,  the  actor  who  plays  the  annoyed  man  must  a 
little  desert  nature ;  he  must,  in  short,  be  thinking  of  the 
audience,  and  express  only  so  much  dissatisfaction  and  peevish- 

10  ness  as  is  consistent  with  the  jDleasure  of  comedy.  In  other 
words,  his  perplexity  must  seem  half  put  on.  If  he  repel  the 
intruder  with  the  sober  set  face  of  a  man  in  earnest,  and  more 
especially  if  he  deliver  his  expostulations  in  a  tone  which  in 
the  world  must  necessarily  provoke  a  duel,  his  real-life  manner 

15  will  destroy  the  whimsical  and  purely  dramatic  existence  of  the 
other  character  (which  to  render  it  comic  demands  an  antago- 
nist comicality  on  the  part  of  the  character  opposed  to  it),  and 
convert  w^hat  was  meant  for  mirth,  rather  than  belief,  into  a 
downright  piece  of  impertinence  indeed,  which  would  raise  no 

20  diversion  in  us,  but  rather  stir  pain,  to  see  inflicted  i\i  earnest 
upon  any  unworthy  person.  A  very  judicious  actor  (in  most  of 
his  i^arts)  seems  to  have  fallen  into  an  error  of  this  sort  in  his 
playing  with  Mr.  AVrench  in  the  farce  of  Free  and  Easy. 

Many  instances  would  be  tedious  ;  these  may  suffice  to  show 

25  that  comic  acting  at  least  does  not  always  demand  from  the 
l)erformer  that  strict  abstraction  from  all  reference  to  an 
audience  which  is  exacted  of  it;  but  that  in  some  cases  a  sort 
of  compromise  may  take  place,  and  all  the  purposes  of  dramatic 
delight  be  attained  by  a  judicious  understanding,  not  too  openly 

30  announced,  between  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  —  on  both  sides 
of  the  curtain. 


TO   THE   SHADE   OF   ELLISTON 

JoYousEST  of  once  embodied  spirits,  whither  at  length  hast 
thou  flown?  to  what  genial  region  are  w^e  permitted  to  conjec- 
ture that  thou  hast  flitted? 
35      Art  thou  sowing  thy  wild  oats  yet  (the  harvest-time  was 


TO    THE    SHADE    OF  ELLISTON  207 

still  to  come  with  thee)  upon  casual  sands  of  Avernus  ?  or  art 
thou  enacting  Rover  (as  we  would  giadlier  think)  by  wander- 
ing Elysian  streams? 

This  mortal  frame,  while  thou  didst  play  thy  brief  antics 
amongst  us,  was  in  truth  anything  but  a  prison  to  thee,  as  the  5 
vain  Platonist  dreams  of  this  body  to  be  no  better  than  a 
county  gaol,  forsooth,  or  some  house  of  durance  vile,  whereof 
the  five  senses  are  the  fetters.  Thou  knewest  better  than  to  be 
in  a  hurry  to  cast  oft"  these  gyves ;  and  had  notice  to  quit,  I  fear, 
before  thou  wert  quite  ready  to  abandon  this  fleshy  tenement.  lO 
It  was  thy  Pleasure-House,  thy  Palace  of  Dainty  Devices :  thy 
Louvre,  or  thy  White-Hall. 

AVhat   new  mysterious  lodgings  dost  thou  tenant  now?    or 
when  may  we  expect  thy  aerial  house- w^arming  ? 

Tartarus  we  know,  and  we  have  read  of  the  Blessed  Shades  ;  15 
now  cannot  I  intelligibly  fancy  thee  in  either. 

Is  it  too  much  to  hazard  a  conjecture,  that  (as  the  school- 
men°  admitted  a  receptacle  apart  for  Patriarchs  and  unchrisom° 
babes)  there  may  exist  —  not  far  perchance  from  that  store- 
house of  all  vanities,  which  Milton  saw  in  visions,  —  a  Limbo  20 
somewhere  for  Players?  and  that 


Up  thither  like  aerial  vapours  fly 

Both  all  Stage  things,  and  all  that  in  Stage  things 

Built  their  loud  hopes  of  glory,  or  lasting  fame  ? 

All  the  unaccomplish'd  works  of  Authors'  hands,  25 

Abortive,  monstrous,  or  unkindly  mix'd, 

Damn'd  upon  earth,  fleet  thither  — 

Play,  Opera,  Farce,  with  all  their  trumpery. — 

There,  by  the  neighbouring  moon   (by  some  not  improperly 
supposed  thy  Regent  Planet  upon  earth),  mayst  thou  not  still  30 
be  acting  thy  managerial  pranks,  great  disembodied   Lessee? 
but  Lessee  still,  and  still  a  ^lanager. 

In  Green  Rooms,  impervious  to  mortal  eye,  the  muse  beholds 
thee  wielding  posthumous  empire. 

Thin  ghosts  of    Figurantes"  (never  plump  on  earth)   circle  35 
thee  in  endlessly,  and  still  their  song  is  Fije  on  sinful  P/iantas// ! 

Magnificent    were   thy  capriccios   on    this    globe    of    earth, 


208  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

RoBEiiT  William  Ellistox  !  for  as  yet  we  know  not  thy  new 
name  in  heaven. 

It  irks  nie  to  think,  that,  stript  of  thy  regalities,  thou 
shoiiklst  ferry  over,  a  poor  forked  shade,  in  crazy  Stygian^ 
5  wherry.  Metliinks  I  hear  the  old  boatman,^  paddling  by  the 
weedy  wharf,  with  raucid"  voice,  bawling  "  Sculls,  Sculls  !  " 
to  which,  with  waving  hand,  and  majestic  action,  thou  deignest 
no  reply,  other  than  in  two  curt  monosyllables,  "  No  :  Oars." 

But  the  laws  of  Pluto's  kingdom  know  small  difference  be- 

10  tween  king  and  cobbler ;  manager  and  call-boy ;  and,  if  haply 

your  dates  of  life  were  conterminant,  you  are  quietly  taking 

your  passage,  cheek  by  cheek  (O  ignoble  levelling  of  Death) 

with  the  shade  of  some  recently  departed  candle-snuffer. 

But  mercy!  what  strippings,  what  tearing  off  of  histrionic 
15  robes,  and  private  vanities  !  what  denudations  to  the  bone^  be- 
fore the  surly  Ferryman  will  admit  you  to  set  a  foot  within  his 
battered  lighter. 

Crowns,  sceptres ;  shield,  sword,  and  truncheon ;  thy  own 
coronation  robes  (for  thou  hast  brought  the  whole  property- 
20  man's  wardrobe  with  thee,  enough  to  sink  a  navy);  the  judge's 
ermine;  the  coxcomb's  wig;  the  snuff-box  a  la  Foppington  — 
all  must  overboard,  he  positively  swears — and  that  ancient 
mariner  brooks  no  denial ;  for,  since  the  tiresome  monodrame^ 
of  the  old  Thracian  Harper,°  Charon,  it  is  to  be  believed,  hath 
.'•">  shown  small  taste  for  theatricals. 

Ay,  now  'tis  done.     You  are  just  boat-weight ;  pura  et  puta 
anima° 

But,  bless  me,  how  little  you  look  ! 

So  shall  we  all  look — kings,  and  keysars — stripped  for  the 
'•last  voyage. 

But  the  murky  rogue  pushes  off.  Adieu,  pleasant,  and  thrice 
pleasant  shade  !  with  my  parting  thanks  for  many  a  heavy  hour 
of  life  lightened  by  thy  harmless  extravaganzas,  public  or 
domestic. 
35  Rhadamanthus,  who  tries  the  lighter  causes  below,  leaving 
to  his  two  bretliren  the  heavy  calendars, —  honest  Rhadamanth, 
always  partial  to  i^layers,  weighing  their  particoloured  existence 
here  upon  earth,  —  making  account  of  the  few  foibles,  that  may 
have  stiaded  thy  real  life,  as  we  call  it,  (though,  substantially, 


ELLISTONIANA  209 

scarcely  less  a  vapour  than  thy  idlest  vagaries  upon  the  boards 
of  Drury),  as  but  of  so  many  echoes,  natural  re-percussions,  and 
results  to  be  expected  from  the  assumed  extravagancies  of  thy 
secondary  or  mock  life,  nightly  upon  a  stage  —  after  a  lenient 
castigation  with  rods  lighter  than  of  those  Medusean  ringlets,  5 
but  just  enough  to  "whip  the  offending  Adam  out  of  thee  "  — 
shall  courteously  dismiss  thee  at  the  right  hand  gate  —  the  o.  p. 
side  of  Hades —  that  conducts  to  masques  and  merry-makings, 
in  the  Theatre  Royal  of  Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO,    ET    VALETO.° 


ELLISTONIANA 

I       My  acquaintance  with  the  pleasant  creature,  whose  loss  we  10 
all  deplore,  was  but  slight. 

My  first  introduction  to  E.,  which  afterwards  ripened  into  an 
acquaintance    a   little   on   this   side  of   intimacy,  was  over   a 
counter  of  the  Leamington   Spa  Library,  then  newly  entered 
upon  by  a  branch  of  his  family.     E.,  whom  nothing  misbecame  15 
—  to  auspicate,  I  suppose,  the  filial  concern,  and  set  it  a  going 
with  a  lustre  —  was  serving  in  person  two  damsels  fair,  who 
had  come  into  the  shop  ostensibly  to  inquire  for  some  new  pub- 
lication, but  in  reality  to  have  a  sight  of  the  illustrious  sho^v 
man,  hoping  some  conference.     With  what  an  air  did  he  reach  20 
down  the  volume,  dispassionately  giving  his  opinion  upon  the 
worth  of  the  work  in  question,  and  launching  out  into  a  disser- 
tation on  its  comparative  merits  with  those  of  certain  publi- 
cations of  a  similar  stamp,  its  rivals  !  his  enchanted  customers 
fairly  hanging  on  his  lips,  subdued  to  their  authoritative  sen- 25 
fence.     So  have  I  seen  a  gentleman  in  comedy  acting  the  shop- 
man.    So  Lovelace°  sold  his  gloves  in  King  Street.     I  admired 
the  histrionic  art,  by  which  he  contrived  to  carry  clean  away 
every  notion  of  disgrace,  from  the  occupation  he  had  so  gener- 
ously submitted  to ;  and  from  that  hour  I  judged  him,  with  no  30 
after  repentance,  to  be  a  person  with  whom  it  would  be  a  feli- 
city to  be  more  acquainted. 
p 


210  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

To  descant  upon  his  merits  as  a  Comedian  would  be  super- 
fluous. With  his  blended  private  and  professional  habits  alone 
I  have  to  do;  that  harmonious  fusion  of  the  manners  of  the 
player  into  those  of  everyday  life,  which  brought  the  stage 
5  boards  into  streets  and  dining-parlours,  and  kept  up  the  play 
when  the  play  was  ended.  —  "I  like  Wrench,"  a  friend  was  say- 
ing to  him  one  day,  "  because  he  is  the  same  natural,  easy 
creature,  on  the  stage,  that  he  is  off"  "  My  case  exactly," 
retorted  EUiston  —  with  a  charming    forgetf ulness,    that    the 

10  converse  of  a  projiosition  does  not  always  lead  to  the  same  con- 
clusion —  '•  I  am  the  same  person  off  the  stage  that  I  am  on." 
The  inference,  at  first  sight,  seems  identical ;  but  examine  it  a 
little,  and  it  confesses  only,  that  the  one  performer  was  never, 
and  the  other  always,  acting. 

15  And  in  truth  this  was  the  charm  of  Elliston's  private  deport- 
ment. You  had  spirited  performance  always  going  on  before 
your  eyes,  with  nothing  to  pay.  As  where  a  monarch  takes  up 
his  casual  abode  for  a  night,  the  poorest  hovel  which  he  hon- 
ours by  his  sleeping  in  it,  becomes  ipso  facto°  for  that  time  a 

20  palace ;  so  wherever  Elliston  walked,  sate,  or  stood  still,  there 
was  the  theatre.  He  carried  about  with  him  his  pit,  boxes, 
and  galleries,  and  set  up  his  portable  play-house  at  corners  of 
streets,  and  in  the  market-places.  Upon  flintiest  pavements  he 
trod  the  boards  still ;  and  if  his  theme  chanced  to  be  passionate, 

25  tlie  green  baize  carpet  of  tragedy  spontaneously  rose  beneath 
his  feet.  Now  this  was  hearty,  and  showed  a  love  for  his  art. 
So  Apelles°  always  painted  —  in  thought.  So  G.  D.  alicat/s 
poetises.  I  hate  a  lukewarm  artist.  I  have  known  actors  — 
and  some  of  them  of  Elliston's  own  stamp — who  shall  have 

30  agreeably  been  amusing  you  in  the  part  of  a  rake  or  a  coxcomb, 
through  the  two  or  three  hours  of  their  dramatic  existence ; 
but  no  sooner  does  the  curtain  fall  with  its  leaden  clatter,  but 
a  spirit  of  lead  seems  to  seize  on  all  their  faculties.  They 
emerge  sour,  morose  persons,  intolerable  to  their  families,  ser- 

35  vants,  etc.  Another  shall  have  been  expanding  your  heart  with 
generous  deeds  and  sentiments,  till  it  even  beatsVith  yearnings 
of  universal  sympathy ;  you  absolutely  long  to  go  home  and  do 
some  good  action.  The"  play  seems  tedious,  till  you  can  get 
fairly  out  of  the  house,  and  realise  vour   landable^  intentions 


ELLIS  TON  I  AN  A  21 1 

At  length  the  final  bell  rings,  and  this  cordial  representative  of 
all  that  is  amiable  in  human  breasts  steps  forth  —  a  miser. 
Elliston  was  more  of  a  piece.  Did  he  play  Ranger''  ?  and  did 
Ranger  fill  the  general  bosom  of  the  town  with  satisfaction? 
why  should  he  not  be  Ranger,  and  diffuse  the  same  cordial  5 
satisfaction  among  his  private  circles?  with  his  temperament, 
his  animal  spirits,  his  good  nature,  his  follies  perchance,  could 
he  do  better  than  identify  himself  with  his  impersonation? 
Are  we  to  like  a  pleasant  rake,  or  coxcomb,  on  the  stage,  and 
give  ourselves  airs  of  aA^ersion  for  the  identical  character,  pre-  lO 
sented  to  us  in  actual  life  ?  or  what  would  the  j)erformer  have 
gained  by  divesting  himself  of  the  impersonation  ?  Could  the 
man  Elliston  have  been  essentially  different  from  his  part,  even 
if  he  had  avoided  to  reflect  to  us  studiously,  in  private  circles, 
the  airy  briskness,  the  forwardness,  the  'scape-goat  trickeries  15 
of  his  prototype  ? 

"  But  thei'e  is  something  not  natural  in  this  everlasting  act- 
ing;  we  want  the  real  man." 

Are  you  quite  sure  that  it  is  not  the  man  himself,  whom  yon 
cannot,  or  will  not  see,  under  some  adventitious  trappings,  20 
which,  nevertheless,  sit  not  at  all  inconsistently  upon  him? 
What  if  it  is  the  nature  of  some  men  to  be  highly  artificial? 
The  fault  is  least  reprehensible  in  players.  Gibber'^  was  his 
own  Foppington,  with  almost  as  much  wit  as  Vanbrugh  could 
add  to  it.  25 

"  My  conceit  of  his  person,"  —  it  is  Ben  Jonson  speaking  of 
Lord  Bacon,  —  "  was  never  increased  towards  him  by  his  place 
or  honours.  But  I  have,  and  do  reverence  him  for  the  greatness, 
that  was  only  proper  to  himself;  in  that  he  seemed  to  me  ever 
one  of  the  greatest  men,  that  had  been  in  many  ages.  In  his  30 
adversity  I  ever  prayed  that  Heaven  would  give  him  strength ; 
for  greatness  he  could  not  want." 

The  quality  here  commended  was  scarcely  less  conspicuous 
in  the  subject  of  these  idle  reminiscences  than  in  my  lord  Veru- 
1am.  Those  who  have  imagined  that  an  unexpected  elevation  35 
to  the  direction  of  a  great  London  Theatre,  affected  the  con- 
sequence of  Elliston,  or  at  all  changed  his  nature,  knew  not  the 
essential  greatness  of  the  man  whom  tliey  disparage.  It  was 
my  fortune  to  encounter  him  near  St.  Dunstan's  Church  (which, 


1>12  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 

with  ite  punctual  giants,  is  now  no  more  than  dust  and  a 
shadow),  on  the  morning  of  his  election  to  that  high  office. 
Grasping  my  hand  with  a  look  of  significance,  he  only  uttered, 
—  "  Have  you  heard  the  news?"  —  then  with  another  look  fol- 
0  lowing  up  the  blow,  he  subjoined.  — ''  I  am  the  future  Manager 
of  Drury  Lane  Theatre." — Breathless  as  he  saw  me,  he  stayed 
not  for  congratulation  or  reply,  but  mutely  stalked  away,  leav- 
ing me  to  chew  upon  his  new-blown  dignities  at  leisure.  In 
fact,  nothing  could  be  said  to  it.    Expressive  silence  alone  could 

10  muse  his  praise.     This  was  in  his  great  style. 

But  was  he  less  great,  (be  witness,  O  ye  Powers  of  Equa- 
nimity, that  supported  in  the  ruins  of  Carthage  the  consular 
exile,°  and  more  recently  transmuted  for  a  more  illustrious 
exile,''  the  barren  constableship  of  Elba  into  an  image  of  Im- 

ir>  perial  France),  when,  in  melancholy  after-years,  again,  much 
near  the  same  spot.  I  met  him,  when  that  sceptre  had  been 
wrested  from  his  hand,  and  his  dominion  jvas  curtailed  to  the 
petty  managership,  and  part  proprietorship,  of  the  small  Olym- 
pic, his  Elba  ?     He  si^ill   played   nightly   upon   the   boards  of 

•JO  Drury,  but  in  parts  alas!  allotted  to  him,  not  magnificently 
distributed  by  him.  AVaiving  his  great  loss  as  nothing,  and 
magnificently  sinking  the  sense  of  fallen  material  grandeur  in 
the  more  liberal  resentment  of  depreciations  done  to  his  more 
lofty  intellectual  pretensions,  "  Have  you  heard  "  (his  customary 

2.T  exordium)  —  '•  Have  you  heard,"  said  he,  "  how  they  treat  me? 
they  put  me  in  comedy."  Thought  I  —  but  his  finger  on  his 
lips  forbade  any  verbal  interruption  —  "  where  could  they  have 
put  you  better?"  Then,  after  a  pause — "Where  I  formerly 
played   Romeo,°   I   now  play  Mercutio,°"  —  and   so   again   he 

.'^)  stalked  away,  neither  staying,  nor  caring  for,  responses. 

O,  it  was  a  rich  scene,  —  but  Sir  A C °  the  best  of 

story-tellers  and  surgeons,  who  mends  a  lame  narrative  almost 
as  well  as  he  sets  a  fracture,  alone  could  do  justice  to  it  —  that 
I  was  a  witness  to,  in  the  tarnished  room  (that  had  once  been 

.T)  green)  of  that  same  little  Olympic.  There,  after  his  deposition 
from  Imperial  Drury,  he  substituted  a  throne.  That  Olympic 
Hill  was  his  '•  highest  heaven  "  ;  himself  "  Jove  in  his  chair." 
There  he  sat  in  state,  while  before  him,  on  complaint  of 
proii!pt"r.   wm  broiirr},t    fo,^  judgment  —  how  shall  I  describp 


ELLISTOXIANA  213 

her  ?  —  one  of  those  little  tawdry  things  that  flirt  at  the  tails  of 
choruses  —  a  j^robationer  for  the  town,  in  either  of  its  senses  — 
the  pertest  little  drab  —  a  dirty  fringe  and  appendage  of  the 
lamps'  smoke  —  who,  it  seems,  on  some  disapprobation  ex- 
pressed by  a  ''  highly  respectable  "  audience,  had  precipitately  5 
quitted  her  station  on  the  boards,  and  withdrawn  her  small 
talents  in  disgust. 

"  And  how  dare  you,"  said  her  Manager,  —  assuming  a  cen- 
sorial severity,  which  would  have  crushed  the  confidence  of  a 
Vestris,°  and  disarmed  that  beautiful  Rebel  herself  of  her  pro- 10 
fessional  caprices  —  I  verily  believe,  he  thought  lier  standing 
before  him  —  ''  how  dare  you,  Madam,  withdraw  yourself,  with- 
out a  notice,  from  your  theatrical   duties  ?  "     ''  I  was  hissed, 
Sir."     "  And  you  have   the   presumption   to  decide  upon  the 
taste  of  the  town  ?  "     "  I  don't  know  that.  Sir,  but  1  will  never  15 
stand  to  be  hissed,"  was  the  subjoinder  of  young  Confidence  — 
when  gathering  up  his   features   into  one  significant  mass  of 
wonder,  pity,  and  expostulatory  indignation  —  in  a'lesson  never 
to  have  been  lost  upon  a  creature  less  forward  than  she  who 
stood  before  him  —  his  words  were  these:  "  They  have  hissed  20 
me." 

'  Twas  the  identical  argument  a  fortiori,  which  the  son  of 
Peleus  uses  to  Lycaon  trembling  under  his  lance,°  to  persuade 
him  to  take  his  destiny  with  a  good  grace.  "  I  too  am  mortal." 
And  it  is  to  be  believed  that  in  both  cases  the  rhetoric  missed  25 
of  its  application,  for  want  of  a  proper  understanding  with  the 
faculties  of  the  respective  recipients. 

"  Quite  an  Opera  pit,"  he  said  to  me,  as  he  was  courteously 
conducting  me  over  the  benches  of  his  Surrey  Theatre,  the  last 
retreat,  and  recess,  of  his  every-day -waning  grandeur.  30 

Those  who  knew  Elliston,  will  know  the  manner  in  which  he 
pronounced  the  latter  sentence  of  the  few  words  I  am  about  to 
record.  One  proud  day  to  me  he  took  his  roast  mutton  with  lis 
in  the  Temple,  to  which  T  had  superadded  a  preliminary  had- 
dock. After  a  rather  plentiful  partaking  of  the  meagre  ban-  35 
quet,  not  unrefreshed  with  the  humbler  sort  of  liquors,  T  made 
a  sort  of  apology  for  the  humility  of  tlie  fare,  observing  that  for 
my  own  part  1  never  ate  but  of  one  dish  at  dinner.  ''  I  too 
never  eat  but  one  thing  at  dinner," — was  his  reply — then  after 


214  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 

a  pause  —  "reckoning  fish  as  nothing."  The  manner  was  all 
It  was  as  if  by  one  peremiDtory  sentence  he  had  decreed  the 
annihilation  of  all  the  savoury  esculents,  which  the  pleasant 
and  nutritious-food-giving  Ocean  pours  forth  upon  poor  humans 
5  from  her  watery  bosom.  This  was  greatness,  tempered  with 
considerate  tenderness  to  the  feelings  of  his  scanty  but  welcom- 
ing entertainer. 

Great  wert  thou  in  thy  life,  Robert  William  Elliston !  and 
not  lessened  in  thy  death,  if  report  speak  truly,  which  says  that 

10  thou  didst  direct  that  thy  mortal  remains  should  rej)ose  under 
no  inscription  but  one  of  pure  Latinity.  Classical  was  thy  bring- 
ing up !  and  beautiful  was  the  feeling  on  thy  last  bed,  which, 
connecting  the  man  with  the  boy,  took  thee  back  to  thy  latest 
exercise   of   imagination,   to  the    days   when,   undreaming   of 

15  Theatres  and  Managerships,  thou  wert  a  scholar,  and  an  early 
ripe  one,  under  the  roofs  builded  by  the  munificent  and  pious 
Colet.  For  thee  the  Pauline  Muses  weep.  In  elegies,  that  shall 
silence  this  crude  prose,  they  shall  celebrate  thy  praise. 


THE   OLD  MARGATE   HOY 

I  AM  fond  of  passing  my  vacations  (I  believe  I  have  said  so 
20before)°  at  one  or  other  of  the  Universities.     Xext  to  these  my 
choice  would  fix  me  at  some  woody  spot,  such  as  the  neighbour- 
hood of^  Henley  affords  in  abundance,  on  the  banks  of  my  be- 
loved Thames.     But  somehow  or  other  my  cousin  contrives  to 
wheedle  me  once  in  three  or  four  seasons  to  a  watering-place. 
25  Old  attachments  cling  to  her  in  spite  of  experience.     We  have 
been  dull  at  Worthing  one  summer,  duller  at  Brighton  another, 
dullest  at  Eastbourn  a  third,  and  are  at  this  moment  doing 
dreary   penance    at —  Hastings ! —and    all    because   we   were 
happy  many  years  ago  for  a  "brief  week  at  — Margate.     That 
30  was  our  first  sea-side  experiment,  and  manv  circumstances  com- 
bined to  make  it  the  most  agreeable  holiday  of  my  life.     We 
had  neither  of  us  seen  the  sea,  and  we  had  never"^  been  from 
home  so  long  together  in  company. 


THE    OLD    MARGATE    HOY  215 

Can  I  forget  thee,  thou  old  INIargate  Hoy,  with  thy  weather- 
beaten,  siiu-burnt  captain,  and  his  rough  accommodations  —  ill 
changed  for  the  foppery  and  fresh-water  niceness  of  the  modern 
steam-packet?  To  the  winds  and  waves  thou  committedst  thy 
goodly  freightage,  and  didst  ask  no  aid  of  magic  fumes,  and  5 
spells,  and  boiling  caldrons.  With  the  gales  of  heaven  thou 
wentest  swimmingly  ;  or,  when  it  was  their  pleasure,  stoodest 
still  with  sailor-like  patience.  Thy  course  was  natural,  not 
forced,  as  in  a  hotbed  ;  nor  didst  thou  go  poisoning  the  breath  of 
ocean  wdth  sulphureous  smoke  —  a  great  sea  chimsera,  chimney- 10 
ing  and  furnacing  the  deep ;  or  liker  to  that  fire-god  parching 
up  Scamander.° 

Can  I  forget  thy  honest,  yet  slender  crew,  with  their  coy  reluc- 
tant responses  (yet  to  the  suppression  of  anything  like  contempt) 
to  the  raw  questions,  which  we  of  the  great  city  would  be  ever  15 
and  anon  putting  to  them,  as  to  the  uses  of  this  or  that  strange 
naval  iniplement?     'Specially  can  I  forget  thee,  thou  happy 
medium,  thou  shade  of  refuge  between  us  and  them,  conciliat- 
ing interpreter  of  their  skill  to  our  simplicity,  comfortable  am- 
bassador between  sea  and  land  !  —  whose  sailor-trousers  did  not  20 
more  convincingly  assure  thee  to  be  an  adopted  denizen  of  the 
former,  than  thy  white  cap,  and  whiter  apron  over  them,  wdth 
thy  neat-fingered  practice  in  thy  culinary  vocation,  bespoke  thee 
to  have  been  of  inland  nurture  heretofore  —  a  master  cook  of 
Eastcheap  ?     How  busily  didst  thou  ply  thy  multifarious  occu-  25 
pation,  cook,  mariner,  attendant,  chamberlain;  here,  there,  like 
another  Ariel,°  flaming  at  once  about  all  parts  of  the  deck,  yet 
with  kindlier  ministrations  —  not  to  assist  the  tempest,  but,  as 
if  touched  with  a  kindred  sense  of  our  infirmities,  to  soothe  the 
qualms  which  that  untried  motion   might  haply  raise  in  our  30 
crude  land-fancies.     And  when  the  o'erwashing  billows  drove 
us  below  deck  (for  it  was  far  gone  in  October,  and  we  had  stiff 
and  blowing  weather),  how  did  thy  officious  ministerings,  still 
catering  for  our  comfort,  with  cards,  and  cordials,  and  thy  more 
cordial   conversation,  alleviate  the  closeness   and  the  confine-  35 
ment  of  thy  else  (truth  to  say)  not  very  savoury,  nor  very  invit- 
ing, little  cabin ! 

With  these  additaments  to  boot,  w^e  had  on  board  a  fellow- 
passenger,  whose  discourse  in  verity  might  have  beguiled  a  longer 


216  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

voyage  than  we  meditated,  and  have  made  mirth  and  wonder 
abound  as  far  as  the  Azores.  He  was  a  dai'k,  Spanish-com- 
plexioned  young  man,  remarkably  handsome,  with  an  officer-like 
assurance,  "^ and  an  insuppressible  volubility  of   assertion.     He 

5  was,  in  fact,  the  greatest  liar  I  had  met  with  then,  or  since. 
He  was  none  of  your  hesitating,  half  story-tellers  (a  most  pain- 
ful description  of  mortals)  who  go  on  sounding  your  belief,  and 
only  giving  you  as  much  as  they  see  you  can  swallow  at  a  time 
—  the  nibbling  pickpockets  of   your   patience  —  but  one  who 

10  committed  downright,  daylight  depredations  upon  his  neigh- 
bour's faith.  He  did  not  stand  shivering  upon  the  brink,  but 
was  a  hearty,  thorough-paced  liar,  and  plunged  at  once  into  the 
depths  of  your  credulity.  I  partly  believe,  he  made  pretty  sure 
of  his  company.     iS^ot  many  rich,  not  many  wise,  or  learned, 

15  composed  at  that  time  the  common  stowage  of  a  Margate 
l^acket.  We  were,  I  am  afraid,  a  set  of  as  unseasoned  Lon- 
doners (let  our  enemies  give  it  a  worse  name)  as  Alderman- 
bury,  or  Watling-street,  at  that  time  of  day  could  have  supplied. 
There  might  be  an  exception  or  two  among  us,  but  I  scorn  to 

20  make  any  invidious  distinctions  among  such  a  jolly,  compan- 
ionable ship's  company  as  those  were  whom  I  sailed  with. 
Something  too  must  be  conceded  to  the  Genius  Loci.°  Had  the 
confident  fellow  told  us  half  the  legends  on  land  which  he 
favoured  us  with  on  the  other  element,  I  flatter  myself  the  good 

'25  sense  of  most  of  us  would  have  revolted.  But  we  were  in  a  new 
world,  with  everything  unfamiliar  about  us,  and  the  time  and 
place  disposed  us  to  the  reception  of  any  prodigious  marvel 
whatsoever.  Time  has  obliterated  from  my  memory  much  of 
his  wild  f ablings;    and   the   rest   would   appear   but   dull,   as 

;30  written,  and  to  be  read  on  shore.  He  had  been  Aide-de-camp 
(among  other  rare  accidents  and  fortunes)  to  a  Persian  Prince, 
and  at  one  blow  had  stricken  off  the  head  of  the  King  of  Cari- 
mania  on  horseback.  He,  of  course,  married  the  Prince's 
daughter.     I  forget  what  unlucky  turn  in  the  politics  of  that 

35  court,  combining  with  the  loss  of  his  consort,  was  the  reason  of 
his  quitting  Persia ;  but,  with  the  rapidity  of  a  magician,  he 
transported  himself,  along  with  his  hearers,  back  to  England, 
where  we  still  found  him  in  the  confidence  of  great  ladies. 
There  was  some  story  of  a  Princess  —  Elizabeth,  if  I  remember 


THE    OLD    MARGATE    HOY  217 

—  haAdng  intrusted  to  his  care  an  extraordinary  casket  of  jewels, 
upon  some  extraordinary  occasion  —  but  as  I  am  not  certain  of 
the  name  or  circumstance  at  this  distance  of  time,  I  must  leave 
it  to  the  Royal  daughters  of  England  to  settle  the  honour 
among  themselves  in  private.  I  cannot  call  to  mind  half  his  5 
pleasant  wonders ;  but  I  perfectly  remember  that,  in  the  course 
of  his  travels,  he  had  seen  a  phoenix ;  and  he  obligingly  unde- 
ceived us  of  the  vulgar  error,  that  there  is  but  one  of  that  species 
at  a  time,  assuring  us  that  they  were  not  uncommon  in  some 
parts  of  Upper  Egypt.  Hitherto  he  had  found  the  most  im=lO 
plicit  listeners.  His  dreaming  fancies  had  transported  us  be- 
yond the  "  ignorant  present.^"  But  when  (still  hardying  more 
and  more  in  his  triumphs  over  our  simplicity)  he  went  on  to 
affirm  that  he  had  actually  sailed  tlirough  the  legs  of  the  Colos- 
sus at  Rhodes,  it  really  became  necessarj-  to  make  a  stand.  And  15 
here  I  must  do  justice  to  the  good  sense  and  intrepidity  of  one 
of  our  party,  a  youth,  that  had  hitherto  been  one  of  his  most 
deferential  auditors,  who,  from  his  recent  reading,  made  bold 
to  assure  the  gentleman,  that  there  must  be  some  mistake, 
as  "  the  Colossus  in  question  had  been  destro3"ed  long  since ;  "  20 
to  whose  opinion,  delivered  with  all  modesty,  our  hero  was 
obliging  enough  to  concede  thus  much,  that  "the  figure  was 
indeed  a  little  damaged."  This  was  the  only  opposition  he  met 
with,  and  it  did  not  at  all  seem  to  stagger  him,  for  he  proceeded 
with  his  fables,  which  the  same  youth  appeared  to  swallow  with  25 
still  more  complacency  than  ever,  —  confirmed,  as  it  were,  by 
the  extreme  candour  of  that  concession.  With  these  prodigies 
he  wheedled  us  on  till  we  came  in  sight  of  the  Reculvers,"  which 
one  of  our  own  company  (having  been  the  voyage  before)  im- 
mediately recognizing,  and  pointing  out  to  us,  was  considered  30 
by  us  as  no  ordinary  seaman. 

All  this  time  sat  upon  the  edge  of  the  deck  quite  a  different 
character.  It  was  a  lad,  apparently  very  poor,  very  infirm,  and 
very  patient.  His  eye  was  ever  on  the  sea,  with  a  smile  ;  and, 
if  he  caught  now  and  then  some  snatehes  of  these  wild  legends,  35 
it  was  by  accident,  and  they  seemed  not  to  concern  him.  The 
waves  to  him  whispered  more  pleasant  stories.  He  was  as  one 
being  with  us,  but  not  of  us.  He  heard  the  l)ell  of  dinner  ring 
without  stirring ;  and  when  some  of  us  pulled  out  our  private 


218  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

stores  —  our  cold  meat  and  our  salads  —  he  produced  none,  and 
seemed  to  want  none.  Only  a  solitary  biscuit  he  had  laid  in  ; 
provision  for  the  one  or  two  days  and  nights,  to  which  these 
vessels  then  were  oftentimes  obliged  to  prolong  their  voyage. 

5  Upon  a  nearer  acquaintance  with  him,  which  he  seemed  neither 
to  court  nor  decline,  we  learned  that  he  was  going  to  Margate, 
with  tiie  hope  of  being  admitted  into  the  Infii-mary  there  for 
sea-bathing.  His  disease  was  a  scrofula,  which  appeared  to 
have  eaten"  all  over  him.     He  expressed  great  hopes  of  a  cure  ; 

10  and  when  we  asked  him  whether  he  had  any  friends  where  he 
was  going,  he  replied,  "  he  had  no  friends." 

These  pleasant,  and  some  mournful  passages,  with  the  first 
sight  of  the  sea,  co-operating  with  youth,  and  a  sense  of  holi- 
days, and  out-of-door  adventure,  to  me  that  had  been  pent  up 

loin  populous  cities^  for  many  months  before,  —  have  left  upon 
my  mind  the  fragrance  as  of  summer  days  gone  by,  bequeathing 
nothing  but  their  remembrance  for  cold  and  wintry  hours  to 
cheAV  upon. 

Will  it  be  thought  a  digression  (it  may  spare  some  unwelcome 

20  comparisons)  if  I  endeavour  to  account  for  the  dissatisfaction 
which  I  have  heard  so  many  persons  confess  to  have  felt  (as  I 
did  myself  feel  in  part  on  this  occasion),  at  the  sight  of  the  sea 
for  the  first  time?  I  think  the  reason  usually  given — referring 
to  the  incapacity  of  actual  objects  for  satisfying  our   precon- 

25  ceptions  of  them  —  scarcely  goes  deep  enough  into  the  question. 
Let  the  same  person  see  a  lion,  an  elephant,  a  mountain  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  and  he  shall  perhaps  feel  himself  a  little 
mortified.  The  things  do  not  fill  up  that  space  which  the  idea 
of  them  seemed  to  take  up  in  his  mind.     But  they  have  still  a 

30  correspondency  to  his  first  notion,  and  in  time  grow  up  to  it,  so 
as  to  produce  a  A^ery  similar  impression :  enlarging  themselves 
(if  I  may  say  so)  upon  familiarity.  But  the  sea  remains  a 
disappointment.  Is  it  not,  that  in  the  latter  we  had  expected  to 
l)ehold  (absurdly,  I  grant,  but,  I   am   afraid,  by   the   law   of 

35  imagination,  unavoidably)  not  a  definite  object,  as  those  wild 
beasts,  or  that  mountain  compassable  by  the  eye,  but  all  the  sea 
at  once,  the  commexsurate  antagonist  of  the  earth? 
I  do  not  say  we  tell  ourselves  so  much,  but  the  craving  of  the 
mind  is  to  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less.     I  will  suppose  the 


THE    OLD    MARGATE    HOY  219 

case  of  a  young  person  of  fifteen  (as  I  then  was)  knowing 
nothing  of  the  sea,  but  from  description.  He  comes  to  it  for 
the  first  time  —  all  that  he  has  been  reading  of  it  all  his  life, 
and  that  the  most  enthusiastic  part  of  life,  —  all  he  has  gathered 
from  narratives  of  wandering  seamen, — what  he  has  gained  5 
from  true  voyages,  and  what  he  cherishes  as  credulously  froui 
romance  and  poetry;  —  crowding  their  images,  and  exacting- 
strange  tributes  from  expectation. —  Rethinks  of  the  great 
deep,  and  of  those  who  go  down  unto  it;  of  its  thousand  isles, 
and  of  the  vast  continents  it  washes ;  of  its  receiving  the  Ifl 
mighty  Plata,  or  Orellana,°  into  its  bosom,  without  disturbance, 
or  sense  of  augmentation;  of  Biscay  swells,  and  the  mariner 

For  many  a  day,  and  many  a  dreadful  night, 
Incessant  labouring  round  the  stormy  Cape  ; 

of   fatal   rockvS,  and   the    "still-vexed    Bermoothes°;  "  of  great  15 
whirlpools,  and  the  water-spout;  of  sunken  ships,  and  sumless 
treasures  swallowed  up  iu  the  unrestoring  depths ;  of  fishes  and 
quaint  monsters,  to  which  all  that  is  terrible  on  earth 

Be  but  as  buggs  to  frighten  babes  withal, 

ComiDared  with  the  creatures  in  the  sea's  entral ;  20 

of  naked  savages,  and  Juan  Fernandez ;  of  pearls,  and  shells  ; 
of  coral  beds,  and  of  enchanted  isles ;  of  mermaids'  grots  — 

I  do  not  assert  that  iu  sober  earnest  he  expects  to  be  shown 
all  these  wonders  at  once,  but  lie  is  under  the  tyranny  of   a 
mighty  faculty,  which  haunts  him   with   confused   hints  and  25 
shadows  of  all  these ;  and  when  the  actual  object  opens  first 
upon  him,  seen  (in  tame  weather  too  most  likely)  from   our 
unromantic  coasts —  a  speck,  a  slip  of  sea-water,  as  it  shows  to 
hiui  —  what  can  it  prove   but   a   very  unsatisfying    and   even 
diminutive  entertainment  ?     Or  if  he  has  come  to  it  from  the  30 
mouth  of  a  river,  was  it  much  more  than  the  river  widening? 
and,  even  out  of  sight  of  land,  what  had  he  but  a  flat  watery 
horizon    about    him,    nothing    comparable    to    the    vast    o'er 
curtaining  sky,  his  familiar  object,  seen  daily  without  dread  or 
amazement? — Who,  in  similar   circumstances,  has   not   been  35 
tempted  to   exclaim   with    Charoba,  in   the  poem   of    Gebir," 

Is  this  the  mighty  ocean ?  —  is  this  all? 


220  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

I  love  town,  or  country;  but  this  detestable  Cinque  Port  is 
neither.  I  hate  these  scrubbed  shoots,  thrusting  out  their 
starved  foliage  from  between  the  horrid  fissures  of  dusty  in- 
nutritions rocks ;  which  the  amateur  calls  '■  verdure  to  the  edge 
5  of  the  sea."  I  require  woods,  and  they  show  me  stunted 
coppices.  I  cry  out  for  the  vrater-brooks,  and  pant  for  fresh 
streams,  and  inland  murnmrs.  I  cannot  stand  all  day  on  the 
naked  beach,  watching  the  capricious  hues  of  the  sea.  shifting- 
like  the  colours  of  dying  mullet.     I  am  tired  of  looking  out  at 

10  the  windows  of  this  island-prison.  I  would  fain  retire  into  the 
interior  of  my  cage.  While  I  gaze  upon  the  sea,  I  want  to  be 
on  it,  over  it,  across  it.  It  binds  me  in  with  chains,  as  of  iron. 
My  thoughts  are  abroad.  I  should  not  so  feel  in  Staffordshire. 
There  is  no  home  for  me  here.      There  is  no  sense  of  home  at 

15  Hastings.  It  is  a  place  of  fugitive  resort,  an  heterogeneous 
assemblage  of  sea-mews  and  stockbrokers.  Amphitrites°  of  the 
town,  and  misses  that  coquet  with  the  Ocean.  If  it  were  what 
it  was  in  its  primitive  shape,  and  what  it  ought  to  have 
remained,  a  fair,  honest  fishing-town,  and  no  more,  it  were  some- 

20  thing  —  with  a  few  straggling  fishermen's  huts  scattered  about, 
artless  as  its  cliffs,  and  with  their  materials  filched  from  them, 
it  were  something.  I  could  abide  to  dwell  with  Meshech ;  to 
assort  with  fisher-swains,  and  smugglers.  There  are,  or  I  dream 
there  are,  many  of   this    latter   occupation   here.     Their  faces 

2')  become  the  place.  I  like  a  smuggler.  He  is  the  only  ho'nest 
thief.  He  robs  nothing  but  the  revenue  —  an  abstraction  I 
never  greatly  cared  about.  I  could  go  out  with  them  in 
their  mackerel  boats,  or  about  their  less  ostensible  business, 
with  some  satisfaction.     I  can  even  tolerate  those  poor  victims 

30  to  monotony,  who  from  day  to  day  pace  along  the  beach,  in 
endless  progress  and  recurrence,  to  watch  their  "illicit  country- 
men—  townsfolk  or  brethren  perchance  —  whistling  to  the 
sheathing  and  unsheathing  of  their  cutlasses  (their  only  solace), 
who,  under  the  mild  name  of   preventive  service,  keep  up   a 

:35  legitimated  civil  warfare  in  the  deplorable  absence  of  a  foreign 
one,  to  show  their  detestation  of  run  hollands,  and  zeal  for  Old 
England.  But  it  is  the  visitants  from  town,  that  come  here 
to  say  that  they  have  been  here,  with  no  more  relish  of  the  sea 
than  a  pond-perch  or  a  dace  might  be  supposed  to  have,  that 


THE    OLD    MARGATE   HOY  221 

are  ray  aversion.  I  feel  like  a  foolish  dace  in  these  regions,  and 
hare  as  little  toleration  for  myself  here  as  for  them.  What  can 
they  want  here?  If  they  had  a  trae  relish  of  the  ocean,  why 
have  they  brought  all  this  land  luggage  with  them?  or  why 
pitch  their  civilized  tents  in  the  desert?  What  mean  these 5 
scanty  book-rooms  —  marine  libraries  as  they  entitle  them  — 
if  the  sea  were,  as  they  would  have  us  believe,  a  book  "  to  read 
strange  matter  in°  "  ?  what  are  their  foolish  concert-rooms,  if 
they  come,  as  they  would  fain  be  thought  to  do,  to  listen  to  the 
music  of  the  waves?  All  is  false  and  hollow  pretension.  They  10 
come  because  it  is  the  fashion,  and  to  spoil  the  nature  of  the 
place.  They  are  mostly,  as  I  have  said,  stock-brokers ;  but  I  have 
watched  the  better  sort  of  them  —  now  and  then,  an  honest  citizen 
(of  the  old  stamp), in  the  simplicity  of  his  heart,  shall  bring  down 
his  wife  and  daughters  to  taste  the  sea  breezes.  I  always  know  the  15 
date  of  their  arrival.  It  is  easy  to  see  it  in  their  countenance. 
A  day  or  two  they  go  wandering  on  the  shingles,  picking  up 
cockle-shells,  and  thinking  them  great  things  ;  but,  in  a  poor 
week,  imagination  slackens  :  they  begin  to  discover  that 
cockles  produce  no  pearls,  and  then  —  O  then  !  if  I  could  inter-  20 
pret  for  the-pretty  creatures  (I  know  they  have  not  the  courage 
to  confess  it  themselves),  how  gladly  would  they  exchange  their 
seaside  rambles  for  a  Sunday  walk  on  the  green-sward  of  their 
accustomed  Twickenham  meadows ! 

I  would  ask  one  of  these  sea-charmed  emigrants,  who  think  25 
they  truly  love  the  sea,  with  its  wild  usages,  what  would  their 
feelings  be  if  some  of  the  unsophisticated  aborigines  of  this 
place,  encouraged  by  their  courteous  questionings  here,  should 
venture,  on  the  faith  of  such  assured  sympathy  between  them, 
to  return  the  visit,  and  come  up  to  see  —  London.  I  must  30 
imagine  them  with  their  fishing-tackle  on  their  back,  as  we 
carry  our  town  necessaries.  What  a  sensation  would  it  cause 
in  Lothbury !  What  vehement  laughter  would  it  not  excite 
among 

The  daughters  of  Cheapside,  and  wives  of  Lombard-street.  33 

I  am  sure  that  no  town-bred  or  inland-born  subjects  can  feel 
their  true  and  natural  nourishment  at  these  sea-places.  Xature, 
where  she  does  not  mean  us  for  nuiriners  and  vagabonds,  bids 


222  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

us  stay  at  liome.  The  salt  foam  seems  to  noiiiish  a  spleen.  J 
am  not  half  so  good-natured  as  by  the  milder  waters  of  my 
natural  river.  I  would  exchange  these  sea-gulls  for  swans, 
and  scud  a  swallow  for  ever  about  the  banks  of  Thamesis. 


THE  CONVALESCENT 

5  A  PRETTY  severe  fit  of  indisposition  which,  under  the  name 
of  a  nervous  fever,  has  made  a  prisoner  of  me  for  some  weeks 
past,  and  is  but  slowly  leaving  me,  has  reduced  me  to  an  in- 
capacity of  reflecting  upon  any  topic  foreign  to  itself.  Expect 
no  healthy  conclusions  from  me  this  month,  Reader ;  I  can  offer 
10  you  only  sick  men's  dreams. 

And  truly  the  whole  state  of  sickness  is  such  ;  for  what  else 
is  it  but  a  magnificent  dream  for  a  man  to  lie  a-bed,  and  draw 
daylight  curtains  about  him  ;  and,  shutting  out  the  sun,  to 
induce  a  total  oblivion  of  all  the  works  which  are  going  on 
15  under  it  ?  To  become  insensible  to  all  the  023erations  of  life, 
except  the  beatings  of  one  feeble  pulse  ? 

If  there  be  a  regal  solitude,  it  is  a  sick-bed.    How  the  patient 
lords  it  there;  what  caprices  he  acts  without  control !  how  king- 
like he  sways  his  pillow  —  tumbling,  and  tossing,  and  shifting, 
20  and  lowering,  and  thumping,  and  flatting,  and  moulding  it,  to 
the  ever-varying  requisitions  of  his  throbbing  temples. 

He  changes  sides  oftener  than  a  politician.     Now  he  lies  full 

length,  then  half-length,  obliquely,  transversely,  head  and  feet 

quite  across  the  bed ;  and  none  accuses  him  of  tergiversation. 

25  Within  the  four  curtains  he  is  absolute.     They  are  his  Mare 

Clausum.° 

How  sickness  enlarges  the  dimensions  of  a  man's  self  to  him- 
self!  he  is  his  own  exclusive  object.  Supreme  selfishness  is 
inculcated  upon  him  as  his  only  duty.  'Tis  the  Two  Tables 
30  of  the  Law  to  him.  He  has  nothing  to  think  of  but  how  to  get 
well.  AVhat  passes  out  of  doors,  or  within  them,  so  he  hear  not 
the  jarring  of  them,  affects  him  not. 

A  little  while  ago  he  was  greatly  concerned  in  the  event  of  a 


THE    CONVALESCENT  223 

lawsuit,  which  was  to  be  the  making  or  the  marring  of  his 
dearest  friend.  He  was  to  be  seen  trndging  about  upon  this 
man's  errand  to  fifty  quarters  of  the  tow^n  at  once,  jogging 
this  witness,  refreshing  that  solicitor.  The  cause  was  to  come 
on  yesterday.  He  is  al^sohitely  as  indifferent  to  the  decision  as  5 
if  it  were  a  question  to  be  tried  at  Pekin.  Peradventure  from 
some  whispering,  going  on  about  the  house,  not  intended  for 
his  liearing,  he  picks  up  enough  to  make  him  understand  that 
things  went  cross-grained  in  the  Court  yesterday,  and  his  friend 
is  ruined.  But  tlie  word  "friend,"  and  the  word  "ruin,"  dis- 10 
turb  him  no  more  than  so  much  jargon.  He  is  not  to  think  of 
anything  but  how  to  get  better. 

What  a  world  of  foreign  cares  are  merged  in  that  absorbing 
consideration  ! 

He  has  put  on  the  strong  armour  of  sickness,  he  is  wrapped  15 
in  the  callous  hide  of  suffering ;  he  keeps  his  sympathy,  like 
some  curious  vintage,  under  trusty  lock  and  key,  for  his  own 
use  only. 

■     He  lies  pitying  himself,  honing  and  moaning  to  himself;  he 
yearneth  over  himself  ;  his  bow^els  are  even  melted  within  him,  20 
to  think  what   he    suffers ;    he   is   not  ashamed   to  weep  over 
himself. 

He  is  for  ever  plotting   how  to  do  some  good  to  himself; 
studying  little  stratagems  and  artificial  alleviations. 

He  makes  the  most  of  himself;  dividing  himself,  by  an  allow- 25 
able  fiction,  into  as  many  distinct  individuals  as  he  hath  sore 
and  sorrowing  members.  Sometin)es  he  meditates  —  as  of  a 
thing  apart  from  him  —  upon  his  poor  aching  head,  and  that 
dull  pain  which,  dozing  or  waking,  lay  in  it  all  the  past  night 
like  a  log,  or  palpable  substance  of  pain,  not  to  be  removed  ho 
without  opening  the  very  skull,  as  it  seemed,  to  take  it  thence. 
Or  he  pities  his  long,  clammj^  attenuated  fingers.  He  compas- 
sionates himself  all  over;  and  his  bed  is  a  very  discipline  of 
humanity,  and  tender  heart. 

He  is  his  own  sympathizer;  and  histinctively  feels  that  none 35 
can  so  well  perform  that  olfice  for  him.     He  cares  for  few  spec- 
tators to  his  tragedy.     Only  that  punctual  face  of  the  old  nurse 
pleases  him,  that  announces  his  broths  and  his  cordials.     He 
likes  it  because  it  is  so  unmoved,  and  because  he  can  pour  forth 


224  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

his  feverish  ejaculations    before  it   as  unreservedly  as  to  his 
bed-post. 

To  the  world's  business  he  is  dead.  He  understands  not 
what  the  callings  and  occupations  of  mortals  are  ;  only  he  has 
5  a  glimmering  conceit  of  some  such  thing,  when  the  doctor 
makes  his  daily  call;  and  even  in  the  lines  of  that  busy  face  he 
reads  no  multiplicity  of  patients,  but  solely  conceives  of  him- 
self as  the  sick  man.  To  what  other  uneasy  couch  the  good 
man  is  hastening,  when  he  slips  out  of  his  chamber,  folding  up 

10  his  thin  douceur  so  carefully  for  fear  of  rustling  —  is  no  specu- 
lation which  he  can  at  present  entertain.  He  thinks  only  of 
the  regidar  return  of  the  same  phenomenon  at  the  same  hour 
to-morrow. 

Household  rumours  touch  him  not.     Some    faint   murmur, 

13  indicative  of  life  going  on  within  the  house,  soothes  him,  while 
he  knows  not  distinctly  what  it  is.  He  is  not  to  know  any- 
thing, not  to  think  of  anything.  Servants  gliding  up  and  down 
the  distant  staircase,  treading  as  upon  velvet,  gently  keep  his 
ear  awake,  so  long  as  he  troubles  not  himself  further  than  with 

20  some  feeble  guess  at  their  errands.  Exacter  knowledge  would 
be  d,  burthen  to  him :  he  can  just  endure  the  pressure  of  con- 
jecture. He  opens  his  eye  faintly  at  the  dull  stroke  of  the 
muffled  knocker,  and  closes  it  again  without  asking  "  Who  was 
it?"     He  is  flattered  by  a  general   notion   that   inquiries   are 

25  making  after  him,  but  he  cares  not  to  know  the  name  of  the 
inquirer.  In  the  general  stillness,  and  awful  hush  of  the  house, 
he  lies  in  state  and  feels  his  sovereignty. 

To  be  sick  is  to  enjoy  monarchal  prerogatives.  Compare 
the  silent  tread  and  qniet  ministry,   almost  by  the  eye  only, 

•'■0  with  which  he  is  served  —  with  the  careless  demeanour,  the  un- 
ceremonious goings  in  and  out  (slapping  of  doors,  or  leaving 
them  open)  of  the  very  same  attendants,  when  he  is  getting  a 
little  better  —  and  you  will  confess,  that  from  the  bed  of  sick- 
ness (throne  let  me  rather  call  it)  to  the  elbow-chair  of  conva- 

•jj  lescence,  is  a  fall  from  dignity,  amounting  to  a  deposition. 

How  convalescence  shrinks  a  man  back  to  his  pristine  stature  I 
where  is  now  the  space,  which  he  occupied  so  lately,  in  his  own, 
in  the  family's  eye  ? 

The  scene  of  his  regalities,  his  sick  room,  which  was  his  pres- 


THE    CONVALESCENT  225 

ence-chambei,  where  he  lay  and  acted  his  desi:)otic  fancies  — 
how  is  it  reduced  to  a  common  bedroom !  The  trimness  of  the 
very  bed  has  something  petty  and  unmeaning  about  it.  It  is 
made  every  day.  How  unlike  to  that  wavy,  many-furrowed, 
oceanic  surface,  which  it  presented  so  short  a  time  since,  when  5 
to  make  it  was  a  service  not  to  be  thought  of  at  often  er  than 
three  or  four  day  revolutions,  when  the  patient  was  with  pain 
and  grief  to  be  lifted  for  a  little  wliile  out  of  it,  to  submit  to 
the  encroachments  of  unwelcome  neatness,  and  decencies  which 
his  shaken  frame  deprecated ;  then  to  be  lifted  into  it  again,  10 
for  another  three  or  four  days  respite,  to  flounder  it  out  of 
shape  again,  while  every  fresh  furrow  was  an  historical  record 
of  some  shifting  posture,  some  uneasy  turning,  some  seeking 
for  a  little  ease  ;  and  the  shrunken  skin  scarce  told  a  truer 
story  than  the  crumpled  coverlid.  15 

Hushed  are  those  mysterious  sighs  —  those  groans  —  so  much 
more  awful,  while  we  knew  not  from  what  caverns  of  vast 
hidden  suffering  they  proceeded.  The  Lernean°  pangs  are 
quenched.  The  riddle  of  sickness  'is  solved ;  and  Philoctetes°  is 
become  an  ordinary  personage.  20 

Perhaps  some  relic  of  the  sick  man's  dream  of  greatness  sur- 
vives in  the  still  lingering  visitations  of  the  medical  attendant. 
But  how  is  he,  too,  changed  with  everything  else  !  Can  this 
be  he  —  this  man  of  news  —  of  chat — of  anecdote — of  every- 
thing but  physic  —  can  this  be  he,  who  so  lately  came  between  25 
the  patient  and  his  cruel  enemy,  as  on  some  solemn  embassy 
from    Nature,   erecting    herself  into  a   high  mediating  party? 

—  Pshaw  !  'tis  some  old  woman. 

Farewell  with   him    all  that  made    sickness  pompous  —  the 
spell  that  hushed  the  household  —  the  desert-like  stillness,  felt  30 
throughout  its  inmost  chambers  —  the  mute  attendance  —  the 
inquiry  by  looks — the  still  softer  delicacies  of  self-attention  — 
the  sole  and  single  eye  of  distemper  alonely  fixed  upon  itself 

—  world-thoughts  excluded  —  the  man  a  world  unto  himself  —    " 
his  own  theatre  —  35 

What  a  speck  is  he  dwindled  into  ! 

In  this  flat  swamp  of  convalescence,  left  by  the  ebb  of  sick- 
ness, yet  far  enough  from  the  terra-firma  of  established  health, 
Q 


226  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

your  note,  dear  Editor,  reached  me,  requesting  —  an  article. 
In  Articulo  Mortis, °  thought  I;  but  it  is  something  hard  —  and 
the  quibble,  wretched  as  it  was,  relieved  me.  The  summons, 
unseasonable  as  it  appeared,  seemed  to  link  me  on  again  to  the 
5  petty  businesses  of  life,  which  I  had  lost  sight  of;  a  gentle  call 
to  activity,  however  trivial;  a  wholesome  weaning  from  that 
preposterous  dream  of  self-absorption  —  the  puffy  state  of  sick 
ness  —  in  which  I  confess  to  have  lain  so  long,  insensible  to  the 
magazines  and  monarchies  of  the  world  alike ;  to  its  laws,  and 

10  to  its  literature.  The  hypochondriac  flatus  is  subsiding;  the 
acres,  which  in  imagiuation  I  had  spread  over — for  the  sick 
man  SAvells  in  the  sole  contemplation  of  his  single  sufferings, 
till  he  becomes  a  Tityus°  to  himself  —  are  wasting  to  a  span  ; 
and  for  the  giant  of  self-importance,  which  I  was  so  lately,  you 

15  have  me  once  again  in  my  natural  pretensions  —  the  lean  and 
meagre  figure  of  your  insignificant  Essayist." 


SANITY  OF   TRUE   GENIUS 

So  far  from  the  position  holding  true,  that  great  wit  (or 
genius,  in  our  modern  way  of  speaking),  has  a  necessary 
alliance  with  insanity,  the  greatest  wits,  on  the  contrary,  will 
20  ever  be  found  to  be  the  sanest  writers.  It  is  impossible  for  the 
mind  to  conceive  of  a  mad  Shakspeare.  The  greatness  of  wit, 
by  which  the  poetic  talent  is  here  chiefly  to  be  understood, 
manifests  itself  in  the  admirable  balance  of  all  the  faculties. 
Madness  is  the  disproportionate  straining  or  excess  of  any  one 
25  of  them.  "  So  strong  a  wit,"  says  Cowley,  speaking  of  a  poetical 
friend, 

" did  Nature  to  him  frame, 

As  all  things  but  his  judgment  overcame  ; 
His  judgment  like  the  heavenly  moon  did  show, 
30  Tempering  that  mighty  sea  below.'' 

The  ground  of  the  mistake  is,  that  men,  finding  in  the 
raptures  of  the  higher  poetry  a  condition  of  exaltation.to  which 
they  have  no  parallel  in   their   own    experience,  besides  the 


SANITY    OF    TRUE    GENIUS  227 

spurious  resemblance  of  it  in  dreams  and  fevers,  impute  a  state 
of  dreaminess  and  fever  to  the  poet.  But  the  true  poet  dreams 
being-  awake.  He  is  not  possessed  by  his  subject,  but  has 
dominion  over  it.  In  the  groves  of  Eden  he  walks  familiar  as 
in  his  native  paths.  He  ascends  the  empyrean  heaven,  and  is  5 
not  intoxicated.  He  treads  the  burning  marl  without  dismay; 
he  wins  his  flight  without  self-loss  through  realms  of  chaos 
"and  old  night." °  Or  if,  abandoning  himself  to  that  severer 
chaos  of  a  "  human  mind  untuned,"  he  is  content  awhile  to  be 
mad  with  Lear,°  or  to  hate  mankind  (a  sort  of  madness)  with  10 
Timon,  neither  is  that  madness,  nor  this  misanthropy,  so  un- 
checked, but  that,  —  never  letting  the  reins  of  reason  wholly 
go,  while  most  he  seems  to  do  so,  —  he  has  his  better  genius 
still  whispering  at  his  ear,  with  the  good  servant  Kent  sug- 
gesting saner  counsels,  or  with  the  honest  steward  Flavins  15 
recommending  kindlier  resolutions.  Where  he  seems  most 
to  recede  from  humanity,  he  will  be  found  the  truest  to 
it.  From  beyond  the  scope  of  Nature  if  he  summon  possible 
existences,  he  subjugates  them  to  the  law  of  her  consistency. 
He  is  beautifully  loyal  to  that  sovereign  directress,  even  20 
when  he  appears  most  to  betray  and  desert  her.  His  ideal 
tribes  submit  to  policy ;  his  very  monsters  ai'e  tamed  to  his 
hand,  even  as  that  wild  sea-brood,  shepherded  by  Proteus. °  He 
tames,  and  he  clothes  them  wdth  attributes  of  flesh  and  blood, 
till  they  wonder  at  themselves,  like  Indian  Islanders  forced  to  25 
submit  to  P^uropean  vesture.  Caliban, °  the  Witches,°  are  as 
ti'ue  to  the  law\s  of  their  own  nature  (ours  with  a  difference),  as 
Othello,  Hamlet,  and  Macbeth.  Herein  the  great  and  the  little 
wits  are  differenced  ;  that  if  the  latter  wander  ever  so  little 
from  nature  or  actual  existence,  they  lose  themselves  and  their  30 
readers.  Their  phantoms  are  lawless  ;  their  visions  nightmares. 
They  do  not  create,  which  im[)lies  shaping  and  consistency. 
1'heir  imaginations  are  not  active  —  for  to  be  active  is  to  call 
something  into  act  and  form — but  passive,  as  men  in  sick 
dreams.  For  the  super-natural,  or  something  super-added  to  35 
what  we  know  of  nature,  they  give  you  the  plainly  non-natural. 
And  if  this  were  all,  and  that  these  mental  hallucinations  were 
discoverable  only  in  the  treatment  of  subjects  out  of  nature,  or 
transcending  it,  the  judgment  might  with  some  plea  be  par- 


228  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

doned  if  it  ran  riot,  and  a  little  wautonized  :  but  even  in  tlie 
describing  of  real  and  everyday  life,  that  which  is  before  their 
eyes,  one  of  these  lesser  wits  shall  more  deviate  from  nature  — 
show  more  of  that  inconsequence,  which  has  a  natural  alliance 

5w'ith  frenzy,  —  than  a  great  genius  in  his  "maddest  fits,"  as 
Witliers°  somewhere  calls  them.  We  appeal  to  any  one  that  is 
acquainted  with  the  common  run  of  Lane's  novels,  —  as  they 
existed  some  twenty  or  thirty  years  back,  —  those  scanty  intel- 
lectual viands  of  the  whole  female  reading  public,  till  a  happier 

10  genius  arose,  and  expelled  for  ever  the  innutritions  phantoms, 
^—whether  he  has  not  found  his  brain  more  '-betossed,"  his 
memory  more  pnzzled,  his  sense  of  when  and  where  more  con- 
founded, among  the  improbable  events,  the  incoherent  incidents, 
the  inconsistent  characters,  or  no  characters,  of  some  third-rate 

15  love-intrigue — where  the  persons  shall  be  a  Lord  Glendamour 
and  a  Miss  Rivers,  and  the  scene  only  alternate  between  Bath 
and  Bond-street  —  a  more  bewildering  dreaminess  induced  upon 
him  than  he  has  felt  wandering  over  all  the  fairy-grounds  of 
Spenser.      In  the  productions  we  refer  to,  nothing  but  names 

20  and  places  is  familiar ;  the  persons  are  neither  of  this  world 
nor  of  any  other  conceivable  one  ;  an  endless  string  of  activities 
without  purpose,  of  purposes  destitute  of  motive :  —  we  meet 
phantoms  in  our  known  walks;  fantasques  only  christened.  Li 
the  poet  we  have  names  which  announce  fiction;  and  we  have 

25  absolutely  no  place  at  all,  for  the  things  and  persons  of  the 
Fairy  Queen  prate  not  of  their  "  whereabout."  But  in  their 
inner  nature,  and  the  law  of  their  speech  and  actions,  we  are 
at  home  and  upon  acquainted  ground.  The  one  turns  life  into 
a  dream ;  the  other  to  the  w^ildest  dreams  gives  the  sobrieties  of 

30  everyday  occurrences.  By  what  subtle  art  of  tracing  the  mental 
processes  it  is  effected,  we  are  not  philosophers  enough  to  ex- 
plain, but  in  that  wonderful  episode  of  the  cave  of  ]\Limmon, 
in  which  the  ]\loney  God  appears  first  in  the  lowest  form  of  a 
miser,  is  then  a  worker  of  metals,  and  becomes  the  god  of  all 

'^  the  treasures  of  the  world ;  and  has  a  daughter,  Ambition, 
before  whom  all  the  world  kneels  for  favours  —  with  the 
Hesperian  f  ruit,°  the  w^aters  of  Tantalus,"  with  Pilate  washing 
his  hands  vainly,  but  not  impertinently,  in  the  same  stream  — 
that  we  should  be  at  one  moment  in  the  cave  of  an  old  hoarder 


CAPTAIN   JACKSON  229 

of  treasures,  at  the  next  at  the  forge  of  the  Cyclops,°  in  a  palace 
and  yet  in  hell,  all  at  once,  with  the  shifting  mntations  of  the 
most  rambling  dream,  and  our  judgment  yet  all  the  time  awake, 
and  neither  able  nor  willing  to  detect  the  fallacy,  —  is  a  proof 
of  that  hidden  sanity  which  still  guides  the  poet  in  his  AYildest5 
seeming-aberrations. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  the  whole  episode  is  a  copy  of  the 
mind's  conceptions  in  sleep ;  it  is,  in  some  sort  —  but  what  a 
copy  !  Let  the  most  romantic  of  us,  that  has  been  entertained 
all  night  with  the  spectacle  of  some  wild  and  magnificent  10 
vision,  recombine  it  in  the  morning,  and  try  it  by  his  waking 
judgment.  That  which  appeared  so  shifting,  and  yet  so  co- 
herent, while  that  faculty  was  passive,  when  it  comes  under 
cool  examination  shall  appear  so  reasonless  and  so  unlinked, 
that  we  are  ashamed  to  have  been  so  deluded ;  and  to  have  15 
taken,  though  but  in  sleep,  a  monster  for  a  god.  But  the 
transitions  in  this  episode  are  every  whit  as  violent  as  in  the 
most  extravagant  dream,  and  yet  the  waking  judgment  ratifies 
them. 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON 

Among  the  deaths  in  our  obituary  for  this  month,  T  observe  20 
with  concern  "  At  his  cottage  on  the  Bath  road.  Captain  Jack- 
son." The  name  and  attribution  are  common  enough;  but  a 
feeling  like  reproach  persuades  me  that  this  could  have  been  no 
other  in  fact  than  my  dear  old  friend,  who  some  five-and- 
twenty  years  ago  rented  a  tenement,  which  he  Vv'as  pleased  to  25 
dignify  with  the  appellation  here  used,  about  a  mile  from 
Westbourn  Green.  Alack,  how  good  men,  and  the  good  turns 
they  do  us,  slide  out  of  memory,  and  are  recalled  but  l)y  the  sur- 
prise of  some  such  sad  memento  as  that  which  now  lies  before 
lis!  30 

He  wliom  I  mean  was  a  retired  half-pay  ofticer,  with  a  wife 
and  two  grown-up  daughters,  whom  he  maintained  \\\i\\  the 
port  and  notions  of  gentlewomen  upon  that  slender  professional 
allowance.     Comely  girls  they  were  too. 


230  -  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

And  was  I  in  danger  of  forgetting  this  man?  —  his  cheerful 
suppers  —  the  noble  tone  of  hospitality,  when  first  you  set  your 
foot  in  the  cottage  —  the  anxious  niinisterings  about  you,  where 
little  or  nothing  (God  knows)  was  to  be  ministered.  —  Althea's 
5liorn°  in  a  poor  platter  —  the  power  of  self-enchantment,  by 
which,  in  his  magnificent  wishes  to  entertain  you,  he  multiplied 
his  means  to  bounties. 

You  saw  with  your  bodily  eyes  indeed  what  seemed  a  bare 
scrag —  cold  savings  from  the  foregone  meal  —  remnant  hardly 

10  sufficient  to  send  a  mendicant  from  the  door  contented.  But 
in  the  copious  will  —  the  revelling  imagination  of  your  host 
—  the  "mind,  the  mind.  Master  Shallow,"  whole  beeves  Mere 
spread  before  you  —  hecatombs  —  no  end  appeared  to  the  pro- 
fusion. 

15  It  was  the  widow's  cruse  —  the  loaves  and  fishes;  carving 
could  not  lessen,  nor  helping  diminish  it  —  the  stamina  were 
left — the  elemental  bone  still  flourished,  divested  of  its 
accidents. 

"Let  us  live  while  we  can,"  methinks  I  hear  the  open-handed 

20  creature  exclaim  ;  "  while  we  have,  let  us  not  want,"  "  here  is 
plenty  left;"  "want  for  nothing"  —  with  many  more  such 
hospitable  sayings,  the  spurs  of  appetite,  and  old  concomitants 
of  smoking  boards,  and  feast-oppressed  chargers.  Then  sliding 
a  slender  ratio  of  Single  Gloucester  upon  his  wife's  plate,  or 

25  the  daughter's,  he  would  convey  the  remanent  rind  into  his 
own,  with  a  merry  quirk  of  "  the  nearer  the  bone,"  etc.,  and 
declaring  that  he  universally  preferred  the  outside.  For  we 
had  our  table  distinctions,  you  are  to  know,  and  some  of  us  in 
a  manner  sate  above  the  salt.     Xone  but  his  guest  or  guests 

30  dreamed  of  tasting  flesh  luxuries  at  night,  the  fragments  were 
vert  hospitibiis  sacra°  But  of  one  thing  or  another  there  was 
alvvays  enough,  and  leavings :  only  he  would  sometimes  finish 
the  remainder  crust,  to  show  that  he  wished  no  savings. 

Wine  we   had  none ;    nor,  except  on   very  rare   occasions, 

35  spirits ;  but  the  sensation  of  wine  was  there.  ^  Some  thin  kind 
of  ale  I  remember — "  British  beverage,"  he  would  say!  "Push 
about,  my  boys ; "  "  Drink  to  your  sweethearts,  girls."  At 
every  meagre  draught  a  toast  must  ensue,  or  a  song.  All  the 
forms  of  good  liquor  were  there,  with  none  of  tne  effects  want- 


CAPTAIN   JACKSON  231 

ing.  Shut  your  eyes,  and  you  would  swear  a  capacious  bowl  of 
punch  was  foaming  in  the  centre,  with  beams  of  generous  Port 
or  Madeira  radiating  to  it  from  each  of  the  table  corners.  You 
got  flustered,  without  knowing  w^hence ;  tipsy  upon  words  ;  and 
reeled  under  the  potency  of  his  unperforming  Bacchanalian  n 
encouragements. 

We  had  our  songs — "  AVhy,  Soldiers,  Why,"  —  and  the 
"British  Grenadiers"  —  in  which  last  we  were  all  obliged  to 
bear  chorus.  Both  the  daughters  sang.  Their  proficiency  was 
a  nightly  theme  —  the  masters  he  had  given  them  —  the  "no- 10 
expense  "  which  he  spared  to  accomplish  them  in  a  science  "  so 
necessary  to  young  women."  But  then  —  they  could  not  sing 
"without  the  instrument." 

Sacred,  and,  by  me,  never-to-be-violated,  Secrets  of  Poverty ! 
Should  I  disclose  your  honest  aims  at  grandeur,  your  makeshift  15 
efforts  of  magnificence?  Sleep,  sleep,  with  all  thy  broken 
keys,  if  one  of  the  bunch  be  extant ;  thrummed  by  a  thousand 
ancestral  thumbs ;  dear,  cracked  sj)innet  of  dearer  Louisa ! 
Without  mention  of  mine,  be  dumb,  thou  thin  accompanier  of 
her  thinner  warble!  A  veil  be  spread  over  the  dear  delighted  20 
face  of  the  well-deluded  father,  who  now  haply  listening  to 
cherubic  notes,  scarce  feels  sincerer  pleasure  than  when  she 
awakened  thy  time-shaken  chords  responsive  to  the  twitterings 
of  that  slender  image  of  a  voice. 

We  were  not  without  our  literary  talk  either.      It  did  not  25 
extend  far,  but  as  far  as  it  went  it  was  good.     It  was  bottomed 
well ;  had  good  grounds  to  go  upon.     In  the  cottar/e  was  a  room, 
which  tradition  authenticated  to  have  been  the  same  in  which 
Glover,  in  his  occasional  retirements,  had  penned  the  greater 
part  of  his  Leonidas.     This  circumstance  was  nightly  quoted,  30 
though  none  of  the  present  inmates,  that  I   could   discover, 
aj)peared  ever  to  have  met  with  the  poem  in  question.     But 
that  was  no  matter.     Glover  had  w^ritten  there,  and  the  anec- 
dote was  pressed  into  the  account  of  the  family  importance.     It 
diflused    a  learned   air  through  the  apartment,  the  little  side  35 
casement  of  which  (the  poet's  study  window),  opening  upon 
a  superb  view  as  far  as  the  pretty  spire  of  Harrow,  over  do- 
mains  and   patrimonial    acres,   not    a   rood    nor    square   yard 
whereof   our   host  could  call   liis  own,  yet  gave  occasion    to 


232  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

an  immoderate  expansion  of  —  vanity  shall  I  call  it?  —  in 
his  bosom,  as  he  showed  them  in  a  glowing  summer  evening. 
It  was  all  his,  he  took  it  all  in,  and  communicated  rich 
portions  of  it  to  his  guests.  It  was  a  part  of  his  largess,  his 
5  hospitality ;  it  was  going  over  his  grounds ;  he  was  lord  for 
the  time  of  showing  them,  and  you  the  implicit  lookers-up  to 
his  magnificence. 

He  was  a  juggler,  who  threw  mists  before  your  eyes — you 
had  no  time  to  detect   his   fallacies.     He  w  onld  say,   "  Hand 

10  rae  the  silver  sugar-tongs ; "  and  before  you  could  discover  it 
was  a  single  spoon,  and  that  plated,  he  would  disturb  and 
captivate  your  imagination  by  a  misnomer  of  ''the  urn"  for 
a  tea-kettle ;  or  by  calling  a  homely  bench  a  sofa.  Rich  men 
direct  you  to  their  furniture,  poor  ones  divert  you  from  it ;  he 

15  neither  did  one  nor  the  other,  but  by  simply  assuming  that 
everything  was  handsome  about  him,  you  were  positively  at  a 
demur  what  you  did,  or  did  not  see,  at  the  cottage.  AVith  noth- 
ing to  live  on,  he  seemed  to  live  on  everything.  He  had  a  stock 
of  wealth   in  his  mind ;    not   that  which    is   properly  termed 

20  Content,  for  in  truth  he  was  not  to  be  contained  at  all,  but  over- 
flowed all  bounds  by  the  force  of  a  magnificent  self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm  is  catching ;  and  even  his  wife,  a  sober  native  of 
North  Britain,  who  generally  saw  things  more  as  they  were, 
was  not  proof  against  the  continual  collision  of  his  credulity. 

25  Her  daughters  were  rational  and  discreet  young  women  ;  in  the 
main,  perhaps,  not  insensible  to  their  true  circumstances.     IF 
have  seen  them  assume  a  thoughtful  air  at  times.     But  suchi 
was  the  preponderating  opulence  of  his  fancy,  that  I  am  per-j 
suaded  not  for  any  half  hour  together  did  they  ever  look  theirj 

30  own  prospects  fairly  in  the  face.     There  was'^no  resisting  th( 
vortex  of  his  temperament.     His  riotous  imagination  conjured] 
up  handsome  settlements  before  their  eyes,  which  kept  thei 
up  in  the  eye  of  the  world  too,  and  seem  at  last  to  have  realize( 
^  themselves ;  for  they  both  have  married  since,  I  am  told,  more 

35  than  respectably. 

It  is  long  since,  and  my  memory  waxes  dim  on  some  subjects} 
or  I  should  wish  to  convey  some  notion  of  the  manner  in  whicl| 
the  pleasant  creature  described  the  circumstances  of  his  owi 
wedding-day.     I  faintly  remember  something  of  a  chaise-andj 


THE    SUPERANNUATED    MAN  233 

four,  in  which  he  made  his  entry  into  Glasgow  on  that  morning 
to  fetch  the  bride  home,  or  carry  her  thither,  I  forget  which. 
It  so  completely  made  out  the  stanza  of  the  old  ballad  — 

When  we  came  down  through  Glasgow  town, 
AVe  were  a  eomelj-  sight  to  see ;  5 

My  love  was  clad  in  black  velvet, 
And  I  myself  in  cramasie. 

I  suppose  it  was  the  only  occasion  upon  which  his  own  actual 
splendour  at  all  corresponded  with  the  world's  notions  on  that 
subject.  In  homely  cart,  or  travelling  caravan,  by  whatever  10 
humble  vehicle  they  chanced  to  be  transported  in  less  prosperous 
days,  the  ride  through  Glasgow  came  back  upon  his  fancy,  not 
as  a  humiliating  contrast,  but  as  a  fair  occasion  for  reverting  to 
that  one  day's  state.  It  seemed  an  "  equipage  etern "  from 
which  no  power  of  fate  or  fortune,  once  mounted,  had  power  15 
thereafter  to  dislodge  him. 

There  is  some  merit  in  putting  a  handsome  face  upon  in- 
digent circumstances.  To  bully  and  swagger  away  the  sense 
of  them  before  strangers,  may  not  be  always  discommendable. 
Tibbs,°  and  Bobadil,°  even  when  detected,  have  more  of  our  20 
admiration  than  contempt.  But  for  a  man  to  put  the  cheat 
upon  himself ;  to  play  the  Bobadil  at  home ;  and,  steeped  in 
poverty  up  to  the  lips,  to  fancy  himself  all  the  while  chin-deep 
in  riches,  is  a  strain  of  constitutional  philosophy,  and  a  mastery 
ijover  fortune,  which  was  reserved  for  my  old  friend  Captain  25 
Jackson. 


THE   SUPERANNUATED  MAN 

Sera  taraen  respexit 
Libertas.  Virgil. 


A  Clerk  I  was  in  London  gay.  —  O'Keefe. 

,  If  peradventure.  Reader,  it  has  been  thy  lot  to  waste  the  30 
:olden  years  of  thy  life  —  thy  shining  youth —  in  the  irksome 
,?u  onfinenient  of  an  office;    to  have  thy  prison  dnys   prolonged 
jui-hrougli  middle  age  down  to  decrepitude  and  silver  hairs,  with- 


] 


234  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 


out  hope  of  release  or  respite  ;  to  have  lived  to  forget  that  there 
are  such  things  as  holidays,  or  to  remember  them  but  as  the 
prerogatives  of  childhood ;  then,  and  then  only,  will  you  be  able 
to  appreciate  my  deliverance. 

5  It  is  now  six  and  thirty  years  since  I  took  my  seat  at  the 
desk  in  Mincing-lane.  Melancholy  was  the  transition  at  four- 
teen from  the  abundant  playtime,  and  the  frequently-interven- 
ing vacations  of  school  days,  to  the  eight,  nine,  and  sometimes 
ten  hours  a  day  attendance  at  the  counting-house.     But  time 

10  partially  reconciles  ns  to  anything.    I  gradually  became  content] 

—  doggedly  contented,  as  wild  animals  in  cages. 
It  is  true  I  had  my  Sundays  to  myself;  but  Sundays,  admi- 
rable as  the  institution  of  them  is  for  purposes  of  worship,  are 
for  that  very  reason  the  very  worst  adapted  for  days  of  unbend- 

15  ing  and  recreation.  In  particidar,  there  is  a  gloom  for  me 
attendant  upon  a  city  Sunday,  a  weight  in  the  air.  I  miss 
the  cheerful  cries  of  London,  the  music,  and  the  ballad-singers 

—  the  buzz  and  stirring  murmur  of  the  streets.  Those  eternal 
bells  depress  me.     The  closed  shops  repel  me.     Prints,  pictures, 

20  all  the  glittering  and  endless  succession  of  knacks  and  gewgaws, 
and  ostentatiously  displayed  w^ares  of  tradesmen,  w^hich  make  a 
weekday  saunter  through  the  less  busy  parts  of  the  metropolis 
so  delightful  —  are  shut  out.  No  book-stalls  deliciously  to  idle 
over  —  no  busy  faces  to  recreate  the  idle  man  who  contemplatej 

25  them  ever  passing  by  —  the  very  face  of  business  a  charm  bjf 
contrast  to  his  temporary  relaxation  from  it.     Xothiug  to  b(j 
seen  but  unhappy  countenances  —  or  half-happy  at   best  —  o: 
emancipated    'prentices  and   little  tradesfolks,  with   here  anc 
there  a  servant-maid  that  has  got  leave  to  go  out,  who,  slaving 

30  all  the  week,  with  the  habit  has  lost  almost  the  capacity  of  en 
joying  a  free  hour;  and  livelily  expressing  the  hollowness  of  i 
day's  pleasuring.  The  very  strollers  in  the  fields  on  that  da- 
look  anything  but  comfortable. 

But  besides  Sundays  I  had  a  day  at  Easter,  and  a  day  a 

35  Christmas,  with  a  full  week  in  the  summer  to  go  and  air  mysel 
in  my  native  fields  of  Hertfordshire.     This  last  was  a  great  ii 
dulgence ;  and  the  prospect  of  its  recurrence,  I  believe,  alou 
kept  me  up  through  the  year,  and  made  my  durance  tolerabLf 
But  when  the  week  came  round,  did  the  glittering  phantom  ( 


THE    SVPEBANNUATED    MAN  235 

the  distance  keep  touch  with  me?  or  rather  was  it  not  a  series 
of  seven  uneasy  days,  spent  in  restless  pursuit  of  pleasure,  and 
a  wearisome  anxiety  to  find  out  how  to  make  the  most  of  them? 
Where  was  the  quiet,  where  the  promised  rest?  Before  1  had 
a  taste  of  it,  it  was  vanished.  I  was  at  the  desk  again,  count- 5 
ing  upon  the  fifty-one  tedious  weeks  that  must  intervene  before 
such  another  snatch  would  come.  Still  the  pi'ospect  of  its 
coming  threw  something  of  an  illumination  upon  the  darker 
side  of  my  captivity.  Without  it,  as  I  have  said,  I  could  ' 
scarcely  have  sustained  my  thraldom.  10 

Independently  of  the  rigours  of  attendance,  I  have  ever  been 
haunted  with  a  sense  (perhaps  a  mere  caprice)  of  incapacity  for 
business.  This,  during  my  latter  years,  had  increased  to  such  a 
degree,  that  it  was  visible  in  all  the  lines  of  my  countenance. 
i\Iy  health  and  my  good  spirits  flagged.  I  had  perpetually  a  15 
dread  of  some  crisis,  to  which  I  should  be  found  unequal.  Be- 
sides my  daylight  servitude,  I  served  over  again  all  night  in  my 
sleep,  and  would  awake  with  terrors  of  imaginary  false  entries, 
errors  in  my  accounts,  and  the  like.  I  was  fifty  years  of  age, 
and  no  prospect  of  emancipation  presented  itself.  I  had  grown  20 
to  my  desk,  as  it  w^ere ;  and  the  wood  had  entered  into  my  soul. 

My  fellows  in  the  office  would  sometimes  rally  me  upon  the 
trouble  legible  in  my  countenance  ;  but  I  did  not  know  that  it 
had  raised  the  suspicions  of  any  of  my  employers,  when,  on  the 

r)th  of  last  month,  a  day  ever  to  be  remembered  by  me,  L ,25 

the  junior  partner  in  the  firm,  calling  me  on  one  side,  directly 
taxed  me  with  my  bad  looks,  and  frankly  inquired  the  cause  of 
tliem.  So  taxed,  I  honestly  made  confession  of  my  infirmity, 
and  added  that  I  was  afraid  I  should  eventually  be  obliged  to 
resign  his  service.  He  spoke  some  words  of  course  to  hearten  30 
me,  and  there  the  matter  i-ested.  A  whole  week  I  remained 
labouring  under  tlie  im])ression  that  I  had  acted  imprudently 
in  my  disclosure;  that  I  had  foolishly  given  a  handle  against 
myself,  and  had  been  anticipating  my  own  dismissal.  A  week 
passed  in  this  manner,  the  most  anxious  one,  T  verily  believe,  in  35 
my  whole  life,  when  on  the  evening  of  the  r2th  of  April,  ju.st  as 
I  was  about  quitting  my  desk  to  go  home  (it  might  be  about 
eight  o'clock),  I  received  an  awful  summons  to  attend  the  pres- 
ence of  the  whole  assembled  firm  in  the  formidable  back  par- 


236  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

lour.  I  thought,  now  my  time  is  surely  come,  I  have  done  foi 
myself,  I  am  going  to  be  told  that  they  have  no  longer  occasion 

for  me.     L ,  I  could  see,  smiled  at  the  terror  I  was  in,  which 

was  a  little  relief  to  me,  —  when  to   my  utter   astonishment 

5  B ,  the  eldest  partner,  began  a  formal  harangue  to  me  on 

the  length  of  my  services,  my  very  meritorious  conduct  during 
the  whole  of  the  time  (the  deuce,  thought  I,  how  did  he  find  out 
that?  I  protest  I  never  had  the  confidence  to  think  as  much). 
He  went  on  to  descant  on  the  expediency  of  retiring  at  a  certain 

10  time  of  life  (how  my  heart  panted  I)  and  asking  me  a  few  ques- 
tions as  to  the  amount  of  my  own  property,  of  which  1  have  a 
little,  ended  with  a  proposal,  to  which  his  three  j>artners  nodded 
a  grave  assent,  that  I  should  accept  from  the  house,  which  I  had 
served  so  well,  a  pension  for  life  to  the  amount  of  two-thirds  of 

15  my  accustomed  salary — a  magnificent  offer!  I  do  not  know 
what  I  answered  between  surprise  and  gratitude,  but  it  was 
understood  that  I  accepted  their  proposal,  and  I  was  told  that  I 
was  free  from  that  hour  to  leave  their  service.  I  stammered  out 
a  bow,  and  at  just  ten  minutes  after  eight  I  went  home  —  for 

20  ever.  This  noble  benefit  —  gratitude  forbids  me  to  conceal 
their  names — I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  the  most  munificent 
firm  in  the  world  —  the  house  of  Boldero,  Merry  weather,  Bo- 
sanquet,  and  Lacy. 

Esto  perpetua°  ! 

25  For  the  first  day  or  two  I  felt  stunned,  overwhelmed.  I  could 
only  apprehend  my  felicity  ;  I  was  too  confused  to  taste  it  sin- 
cerely. I  wandered  about,  thinking  I  was  hajDpy,  and  knowing 
that  I  was  not.  I  was  in  the  condition  of  a  prisoner  in  the  old 
Bastile,  suddenly  let  loose  after  a  forty  years  confinement.     I 

30  could  scarce  trust  myself  with  myself.  It  was  like  passing  out 
of  Time  into  Eternity — for  it  is  a  sort  of  Eternity  for  a  man  to 
have  all  his  Time  to  himself.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  more 
time  on  my  hands  than  I  could  ever  manage.  From  a  poor  man, 
poor  in  Time,  I  was  suddenly  lifted  up  into  a  vast  revenue  ;  I 

35  could  see  no  end  of  my  possessions ;  I  wanted  some  steward,  or 
judicious  bailiff,  to  manage  my  estates  in  Time  for  me.  And 
here  let  me  caution  persons  grown  old  in  active  business,  not 
lightly,  nor  without  weighing  their  own  resources,  to  forego  their 


THE    SUPERANNUATED    MAN  237 

customary  employment  all  at  once,  for  there  may  be  danger  in  it. 
I  feel  it  by  myself,  but  I  know  that  my  resources  are  sufficient ; 
and  now  that  those  first  giddy  raptures  have  subsided,  I  have  a 
quiet  home-feeling  of  the  blessedness  of  my  condition.  I  am  in 
no  hurry.  Having  all  holidays,  I  am  as  though  I  had  none.  If  5 
Time  hung  heavy  upon  me,  I  could  walk  it  away ;  but  1  do  not 
walk  all  day  long,  as  I  used  to  do  in  those  old  transient  holi- 
days, thirty  miles  a  day  to  make  the  most  of  them.  If  Time 
were  troublesome,  I  could  read  it  away ;  but  I  do  not  read  in 
that  violent  measure,  with  which,  having  no  Time  my  own  but  10 
candlelight  Time,  I  used  to  weary  oat  my  head  and  eyesight  in 
bygone  winters.  I  walk,  read,  or  scribble  (as  now)  just  when 
the  fit  seizes  me.  I  no  longer  hunt  after  pleasure ;  I  let  it  come 
to  me.     I  am  like  the  man 

that's  born,  and  has  his  years  come  to  him,  15 


In  some  green  desert. 

"Years!  "you  will  say;  "what  is  this  superannuated  simple- 
ton calculating  upon?  He  has  already  told  us  he  is  past 
fifty." 

I  have  indeed  lived  nominally  fifty  years,  but  deduct  out  of  20 
them  the  hours  which  I  have  lived  to  other  people,  and  not  to 
myself,  and  you  will  find  me  still  a  young  fellow.  For  that  is 
the  only  true  Time,  wiiich  a  man  can  properly  call  his  own, 
that  which  he  has  all  to  himself ;  the  rest,  though  in  some  sense 
he  may  be  said  to  live  it,  is  other  people's  Time,  not  his.  The  25 
remnant  of  my  poor  days,  long  or  short,  is  at  least  multiplied 
for  me  threefold.  My  ten  next  years,  if  I  stretch  so  far,  will 
be  as  long  as  any  preceding  thirty.  'Tis  a  fair  rule-of-three 
sum. 

Among  the  strange  fantasies  which  beset  me  at  the  com-yo 
mencement  of  my  freedom,  and  of  which  all  traces  are  not  yet 
gone,  one  was,  that  a  vast  tract  of  time  had  intervened  since  I 
quitted  the  Counting-House.  I  could  not  conceive  of  it  as  an 
affair  of  yesterday.  The  partners,  and  the  clerks,  with  wliom  I 
had  for  so  many  years,  and  for  so  many  hours  in  each  day  of  the  35 
year,  been  closely  associated  —  being  suddenly  removed  from 
them  —  they  seemed  as  dead  to  me.     There  is  a  fine  passage, 


238  THE   ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

which  may  serve  to  illustrate  this  fancy,  in  a  Tragedy  by  Sii 
Robert  Howard,  speaking  of  a  friend's  death  : 

'Twas  but  just  now  he  went  away ; 


I  have  not  since  had  time  to  shed  a  tear 
5  And  yet  the  distance  does  the  same  appear 

As  if  he  had  been  a  thousand  years  from  me. 
Time  takes  no  measure  in  Eternity. 

To  dissipate  this  awkward  feeling,  I  have  been  fain  to  go 
among  them  once  or  twice  since ;  to  visit  my  old  desk-fellows 

10  —  my  co-brethren  of  the  quill  —  that  I  had  left  below  in  the 
state  militant.  Not  all  the  kindness  with  which  they  received 
me  could  quite  restore  to  me  that  pleasant  familiarity,  which  I 
had  heretofore  enjoyed  among  them.  We  cracked  some  of  our 
old  jokes,  but  methought  they  went  oif  but  faintly.     My  old 

15  desk ;  the  peg  where  I  hung  my  hat,  were  appropriated  to  an- 
other.    I  knew  it  must  be,  but  I  could   not   take   it  kindly. 

D 1  take  me,  if  I  did  not  feel  some  remorse  —  beast,  if  I 

had  not,  — ■  at  quitting  my  old  compeers,  the  faithfnl  partners  of 
my  toils  for  six  and  thirty  years,  that  soothed  for  me  with  their 

20  jokes  and  conundrums  the  ruggedness  of  my  professional  road. 
Had  it  been  so  rugged  then  after  all  ?  or  was  I  a  coward  simply  ? 
Well,  it  is  too  late  to  repent ;  and  I  also  know  that  these  sug- 
gestions are  a  common  fallacy  of  the  mind  on  such  occasions. 
But  my  heart  smote  me.     I  had  violently  broken  the  bands  be- 

25  twixt  us.  It  was  at  least  not  courteous.  I  shall  be  some  time 
before  I  get  qnite  reconciled  to  the  separation.  Farewell,  old 
cronies,  yet  not  for  long,  for  again  and  again  I  will  come  among 

ye,  if  I  shall  have  your  leave.     FarewelL  Ch ,  dry,  sarcastic, 

and  friendly  !     Do ,  mild,  slow  to  move,  and  gentlemanly  ! 

30  PI ,  officious  to  do,  and  to  volunteer,  good  services  !  —  and 

thou,  thon  dreary  pile,  fit  mansion  for  a  Gresham°  or  a  Whitting- 
ton°  of  old,  stately  House  of  ]\Ierchants :  with  thy  labyrinthine 
passages,  and  light-excluding,  pent-np  offices,  where  candles  for 
one  half  the  year  supplied  the  place  of  the  sun's  light ;  unhealthy 

35  contributor  to  my  weal,  stern  fosterer  of  my  living,  farewelf ! 
In  thee  remain,  and  not  in  the  obscure  collection  of  some  wan- 
dering bookseller,  my  ''works  !  "  There  let  them  rest,  as  I  do 
from  my  labours,  piled  on  thy  massy  shelves,  more  MSS.  in 


THE  Superannuated  man  239 

folio  than  ever  Aquinas  left,  and  full  as  useful !     My  mantle  I 
bequeath  among  ye. 

A  fortniglit  has  passed  since  the  date  of  my  first  communica- 
tion. At  that  period  I  was  approaching  to  tranquillity,  but  had 
not  reached  it.  I  boasted  of  a  calm  indeed,  but  it  was  compara-  5 
tive  only.  Something  of  the  first  flutter  was  left;  an  unsettling 
sense  of  novelty  ;  the  dazzle  to  weak  eyes  of  unaccustomed  light. 
I  missed  my  old  chains,  forsooth,  as  if  they  had  been  some 
necessary  part  of  my  apparel.  1  was  a  poor  Carthusian,  from 
strict  cellular  discipline  suddenly  by  some  revolution  returned  10 
upon  the  world.  I  am  now  as  if  I  had  never  been  other  than 
ray  own  master.  It  is  natural  for  me  to  go  where  I  please,  to 
do  what  I  please.  I  find  myself  at  11  o'clock  in  the  day  in 
Bond-street,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  been  sauntering 
there  at  that  very  hour  for  years  past.  I  digress  into  Soho,  to  15 
explore  a  bookstall.  JMethinks  I  have  been  thirty  years  a  col- 
lector. There  is  nothing  strange  nor  new  in  it.  I  find  myself 
before  a  fine  picture  in  the  morning.  Was  it  ever  otherwise  ? 
What  is  become  of  Fish-street  Hill?  Where  is  Fenchurch- 
street  ?  Stones  of  old  Mincing-lane,  which  I  have  worn  with  20 
my  daily  pilgrimage  for  six  and  thirty  years,  to  the  footsteps 
of  what  toil-worn  clerk  are  your  everlasting  flints  now  vocal? 
I  indent  the  gayer  flags  of  Pall  Mall.  It  is  'Change  time,  and  I 
am  strangely  among  the  Elgin  marbles.  It  was  no  hyperbole 
when  I  ventured  to  compare  the  change  in  my  condition  to  25 
passing  into  another  world.  Time  stands  still  in  a  manner  to 
me.  I  have  lost  all  distinction  of  season.  I  do  not  know  the 
day  of  the  week,  or  of  the  month.  Each  day  used  to  be  indi- 
vidually felt  by  me  in  its  reference  to  the  foreign  post  days  ;  in 
its  distance  from,  or  propinquity  to,  the  next  Sunday.  I  had  30 
my  Wednesday  feelings,  my  Saturday  nights' sensations.  The 
genius  of  each  day  was  upon  me  distinctly  during  the  whole  of 
it,  affecting  my  appetite,  spirits,  etc.  The  phantom  of  the  next 
day,  with  the  dreary  five  to  follow,  sate  as  a  load  upon  my 
poor  Sabbath  recreations.  What  charm  has  washed  that  35 
Ethiop  white?  What  is  gone  of  Black  INIonday?  All  days 
are  the  same.  Sunday  itself  —  that  unfortunate  failure  of  a 
holyday  as  it  too  often'^  proved,  what  with  my  sense  of  its  fugi- 
tivenes's,  and  over-care  to  get  the  greatest  quantity  of  pleasure 


240  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

out  of  it  —  is  melted  down  into  a  week-day.  I  can  spare  to  go 
to  church  now,  without  grudging  the  huge  cantle°  which  it  used 
to  seem  to  cut  out  of  the  holiday.  I  have  time  for  everything. 
I  can  visit  a  sick  friend.  I  can  interrupt  the  man  of  much 
5  occupation  when  he  is  busiest.  I  can  insult  over  him  with  an 
invitation  to  take  a  day's  pleasure  with  me  to  Windsor  this  fine 
May-morning.  It  is  ]^ucretian°  pleasure  to  behold  the  poor 
drudges,  whom  I  have  left  behind  in  the  world,  carking  and 
caring;  like  horses  in  a  mill,  drudging  on  in  tlie  same  eternal 

10 round  —  and  what  is  it  all  for?  A  man  can  never  have  too 
much  Time  to  himself,  nor  too  little  to  do.  Hftd  I  a  little  son, 
I  would  christen  him  Nothing-to-do  ;  he  should  do  nothing. 
Man,  I  verily  believe,  is  out  of  his  element  as  long  as  he  is 
operative.     I  am  altogether  for  the  life  contemplative.     Will 

15  no  kindly  earthquake  come  and  swallow  up  those  accursed  cot- 
ton-mills ?  Take  me  that  lumber  of  a  desk  there,  and  bowl  it 
down 

As  low  as  to  the  fiends. 

I  am  no  longer  ******,  clerk  to  the  Firm  of,  &c.  I  am 
20  Retired  Leisure.  I  am  to  be  met  with  in  ti-im  gardens.^  I  am 
already  come  to  be  known  by  my  vacant  face  and  careless 
gesture,  perambulating  at  no  fixed  pace,  nor  with  any  settled 
purpose.  I  walk  about ;  not  to  and  from.  They  tell  me,  a 
certain  cum  dignitate°  air,  that  has  been  buried  so  long  with  my 
25  other  good  parts,  has  begun  to  shoot  forth  in  my  person.  I 
grow  into  gentility  perceptibly.  When  I  take  up  a  newspaper, 
it  is  to  read  the  state  of  the  opera.  Opus  operatum  est°  I  have 
done  all  that  I  came  into  this  world  to  do.  I  have  worked  task- 
work, and  have  the  rest  of  the  day  to  myself. 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN  AVRITING 

30  It  is  an  ordinary  criticism,  tha.t  my  Lord  Shaftesbury^  and 
Sir  William  Temple,^  are  models  of  the  genteel  style  in  writing. 
We  should  prefer  saying — of  the  lordly,  and  the  gentlemanly. 
Nothing   can  be  more  unlike   than  the   inflated   finical   rhap-' 


THE    GENTEEL    STYLE    OF    WRITING  241 

sodiesof  Shaftesbury  and  the  plain  natural  chit-chat  of  Temple. 
The  man  of  rank  is  discernible  in  both  ^vriters  ;  but  in  the  one 
it  is  only  insinuated  gracefully,  in  the  other  it  stands  out  of- 
fensively. The  peer  seems  to  have  written  with  his  coronet  on, 
and  his  Earl's  mantle  before  him;  the  commoner  in  his  elbow- 5 
chair  and  undress.  —  What  can  be  more  pleasant  than  the  way 
in  which  the  retired  statesman  peeps  out  in  the  essays,  penned 
by  the  latter  in  his  delightful  retreat  at  Shene?  They  scent  of 
Nimeguen,  and  the  Hague.  Scarce  an  authority  is  quoted 
under  an  ambassador.  Don  Francisco  de  Melo,  a  "  Portugal  10 
Envoy  in  England,"  tells  him  it  was  frequent  in  his  country  for 
men,  spent  with  age  or  other  decays,  so  as  they  could  not  hope 
for  above  a  year  or  two  of  life,  to  ship  themselves  away  in  a 
Brazil  fleet,  and  after  their  arrival  there  to  go  on  a  great  length, 
sometimes  of  twenty  or  thirty  years,  or  more,  by  the  force  of  15 
that  vigour  they  recovered  with  that  remove.  "  Whether  such 
an  effect  (Temple  beautifully  adds)  might  grow  fi-om  the  air, 
or  the  fruits  of  that  climate,  or  by  approaching  nearer  the  sun, 
which  is  the  fountain  of  light  and  heat,  when  their  natural  heat 
was  so  far  decayed  ;  or  whether  the  piecing  out  of  an  old  man's  20 
life  were  worth  the  pains  ;  I  cannot  tell :  perhaps  the  play  is 
not  worth  the  candle." — Monsieur  Pompone,  "  French  Ambas- 
sador in  his  (Sir  William's)  time  at  the  Hague,"  certifies  him, 
that  in  his  life  he  had  never  heard  of  any  man  in  France  that 
arrived  at  a  hundred  years  of  age  ;  a  limitation  of  life  which  the  25 
old  gentleman  imputes  to  the  excellence  of  their  climate,  giving 
iii-m  such  a  liveliness  of  temper  and  humour,  as  disposes  them 
to  more  pleasures  of  all  kinds  than  in  other  countries;  and 
moralizes  upon  the  matter  very  sensibly.  The  "late  Robert 
Karl  of  Leicester"  furnishes  him  with  a  story  of  a  Countess  of  30 
Desmond,  married  out  of  England  in  Edward  the  Fourth's  time, 
and  who  lived  far  in  King  James's  reign.  The  "  same  noble 
person  "  gives  him  an  account,  how  such  a  year,  in  the  same 
reign,  there  went  about  the  country  a  set  of  morrice-dancers,'^ 
composed  of  ten  men  who  danced,  a  Maid  ]Marian,°  and  a  tabor  35 
and  pipe;  and  how  these  twelve,  one  with  another,  made  up 
twelvfj  hundred  years.  "It  was  not  so  much  (says  Temj^le) 
that 'so  many  in  one  small  county  (Hertfordshire)  should  live 
to  that  ag(?,  as  that  they  should  be  in  vigour  and  in  humour  to 
It 


242  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

travel  and  to  dance."  Monsieur  Zulichem,  one  of  his  "  col- 
leagues at  the  Hague,"  informs  him  of  a  cure  for  the  gout ; 
which  is  confirmed  by  another  "  Envoy,"  Monsieur  Serin- 
champs,  in  that  town,  who  had  tried  it.  —  Old  Prince  Maurice 
5  of  Nassau  recommends  to  him  the  use  of  hammocks  in  that 
complaint;  having  been  allured  to  sleep,  while  suffering  under 
it  himself,  by  the  "constant  motion  or  swinging  of  those  airy 
beds."  Count  Egmont,  and  the  Rhinegrave  who  "  was  killed 
last   summer   before   Maestricht,"  impart  to    him  their  expe- 

10  riences. 

But  the  rank  of  the  writer  is  never  more  innocently  disclosed, 
than  where  he  takes  for  granted  thp  compliments  paid  by  for- 
eigners to  his  fruit-trees.  For  the  taste  and  perfection  of  what 
we  esteem  the  best,  he  can  truly  say,  that  the  French,  who  have 

15  eaten  his  peaches  and  grapes  at  Shene  in  no  very  ill  year, 
have  generally  concluded  that  the  last  are  as  good  as  any  they 
have  eaten  in  France  on  this  side  Fontainebleau ;  and  the  first 
as  good  as  any  they  have  eat  in  Gascony.  Italians  have  agreed 
his  white  figs  to  be  as  good  as  any  of  that  sort  in  Italy,  whicli 

20  is  the  earlier  kind  of  white  fig  there  ;  for  in  the  later  kind  and 
the  blue,  we  cannot  come  near  the  warm  climates,  no  more  than 
in  the  Frontignac  or  Muscat  grape.  His  orange-trees,  too,  are 
as  large  as  any  he  saw  when  he  was  young  in  France,  except 
those  of  Fontainebleau,  or  what  he  has  seen  since  in  the  Low 

25  Countries ;  except  some  very  old  ones  of  the  Prince  of 
Orange's.  Of  grapes  he  had  the  honour  of  bringing  over  four 
sorts  into  England,  which  he  enumerates,  and  supposes  that 
they  are  all  by  this  time  pretty  common  among  some  gardeners 
in  his  neighbourhood,  as  well  as  several  persons  of  quality ;  for 

30  he  ever  thought  all  things  of  this  kind  "  the  commoner  they  are 
made  the  better."  The  garden  pedantry  with  which  he  asserts 
that  'tis  to  little  purpose  to  plant  any  of  the  best  fruits,  as 
peaches  or  grapes,  hardly,  he  doubts,  beyond  Northamptonshire 
at  the  furthest  northwards  ;  and  praises  the  '•  Bishop  of  Munstei 

35  at  Cosevelt,"  for  attempting  nothing  beyond  cherries  in  that 
cold  climate;  is  equally  pleasant  and  in  character.  "I  maj 
perhaps  "  (he  thus  ends  his  sweet  Garden  Essay  with  ^  pas 
sage  worthy  of  Cowley)  "be  allowed  to  know 'something  o 
this  trade,  since  I  have  so  long  allowed  myself  to  be  good  fo 


THE    GEXTEEL    STYLE    OF    WRITING  243 

nothing  else,  which  few  men  will  do,  or  enjoy  their  gardens, 
without  often  looking  abroad  to  see  how  other  matters  play, 
what  motions  in  the  state,  and  what  invitations  they  may  hope 
for  into  other  scenes.  For  my  own  part,  as  the  country  life,  and 
this  part  of  it  more  particularly,  were  the  inclination  of  my  5 
youth  itself,  so  they  are  the  pleasure  of  ray  age;  and  I  can 
truly  say  that,  among  many  great  employments  that  have  fallen 
to  m}^  share,  I  have  never  asked  or  sought  for  any  of  them,  but 
have  often  endeavoured  to  escape  from  them,  into  the  ease  and 
freedom  of  a  private  scene,  where  a  man  may  go  his  own  way  10 
and  his  own  pace  in  the  common  paths  and  circles  of  life. 
The  measure  of  choosing  well  is  whether  a  man  likes  what  he 
has  chosen,  which  1  thank  God  has  befallen  me ;  and  though 
among  the  follies  of  my  life,  building  and  planting  have  not 
been  the  least,  and  have  cost  me  more  than  I  have  the  confi- 15 
dence  to  own ;  yet  they  have  been  fully  recompensed  by  the 
sweetness  and  satisfaction  of  this  retreat,  where,  since  my  reso- 
lution taken  of  never  entering  again  into  any  public  employ- 
ments, I  have  passed  five  years  without  ever  once  going  to 
town,  though  I  am  almost  in  sight  of  it,  and  have  a  house  there  20 
always  ready  to  receive  me.  Nor  has  this  been  any  sort  of 
aifectation,  as  some  have  thought  it,  but  a  mere  want  of  desire 
or  humour  to  make  so  small  a  remove  ;  for  when  I  am  in  this 
corner,  I  can  truly  say  with  Horace,  Me  quoties  reficit,  etc. 

"  '  Me,  W'hen  the  cold  Digentian  stream  revives,  25 

What  does  ray  friend  believe  I  think  or  ask  ? 
Let  me  yet  less  possess,  so  I  may  live, 
Whate'er  of  life  remains,  unto  myself. 
May  I  have  books  enough  ;  and  one  year's  store, 
Not  to  depend  upon  each  doubtful  hour :  30 

This  is  enough  of  mighty  Jove  to  pray, 
Who,  as  he  pleases,  gives  and  takes  away.'  " 

The  writings  of  Temple  are,  in  general,  after  this  easy  copy. 
On  one  occasion,  indeed,  his  wit,  which  was  mostly  subordinate 
to  nature  and  tenderness,  has  seduced  him  into  a  string  of  35 
felicitous  antitheses ;  which,  it  is  obvious  to  remark,  have  been 
a  model  to  Addison  and  succeeding  essayists.  *'  Who  would 
not  be  covetous,  and  with  reason,"  he  says,  "  if  health  could  be 


244  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

purchased  with  gold?  who  not  ambitions,  if  it  were  at  the 
command  of  power,  or  restored  by  honour  ?  but,  alas !  a  white 
staff  will  not  help  gouty  feet  to  walk  better  than  a  common 
cane ;  nor  a  blue  ribband  bind  up  a  wound  so  well  as  a  fillet. 
5  The  glitter  of  gold,  or  of  diamonds,  will  but  hurt  sore  eyes  in- 
stead of  curing  them;  and  an  aching  head  will  be  no  more 
eased  by  wearing  a  crown  than  a  common  nightcap."  In  a  far 
better  style,  and  more  accordant  with  his  own  humour  of  plain- 
ness,  are   the   concluding   sentences   of    his    '•  Discourse  upon 

10  Poetry."  Temple  took  a  part  in  the  controversy  about  the 
ancient  and  the  modern  learning  ;  and,  with  that  partiality  so 
natural  and  so  graceful  in  an  old  man,  whose  state  engage- 
ments had  left  him  little  leisure  to  look  into  modern  produc- 
tions, while  his  retirement  gave  him  occasion  to  look  back  upon 

15  the  classic  studies  of  his  youth — decided  in  favour  of  the 
latter.  "  Certain  it  is,"  he  says,  "  that,  whether  the  fierceness 
of  the  Gothic  humours,  or  noise  of  their  perpetual  wars,  frighted 
it  away,  or  that  the  unequal  mixture  of  the  modern  languages 
would   not  bear  it  —  the  great  heights  and  excellency  both  of 

20  poetry  and  music  fell  with  the  Roman  learning  and  empire, 
and  have  never  since  recovered  the  admiration  and  applauses 
that  before  attended  them.  Yet,  such  as  they  are  amongst  us, 
they  must  be  confessed  to  be  the  softest  and  sweetest,  the  most 
general  and  most  innocent  amusements  of  common  time  and 

25  life.  They  still  find  room  in  the  courts  of  princes,  and  the  cot- 
tages of  shepherds.  They  serve  to  revive  and  animate  the  dead 
calm  of  poor  and  idle  lives,  and  to  allay  or  divert  the  violent 
passions  and  perturbations  of  the  greatest  and  the  busiest  men. 
And  both  these  effects  are  of  equal  use  to  human  life ;  for  the 

30  mind  of  man  is  like  the  sea,  which  is  neither  agreeable  to  the 
beholder  nor  the  voyager,  in  a  calm  or  in  a  storm,  but  is  so  to 
both  when  a  little  agitated  by  gentle  gales ;  and  so  the  mind, 
when  moved  by  soft  and  easy  passions  or  affections.  I  know 
very  well  that  many  who  pretend  to  be  wise  by  the  forms  of 

35  being  grave,  are  apt  to  despise  both  poetry  and  music,  as  toys 
and  trifles  too  light  for  the  use  or  entertainment  of  serious 
men.  But  whoever  find  themselves  wliolly  insensible  to  their 
charms,  would,  I  think,  do  well  to  keep  tlieir  own  counsel,  for 
fear  of  reproaching  their  own  temper,  and  bringing  the  good- 


BARBARA    S 245 

ness  of  their  natures,  if  not  of  their  understandings,  into  ques- 
tion. While  this  world  lasts,  I  doubt  not  but  the  pleasure  and 
request  of  these  two  entertainments  will  do  so  too  ;  and  happy 
those  that  content  themselves  with  these,  or  any  other  so  easy 
and  so  innocent,  and  do  not  trouble  the  world  or  other  men,  5 
because  they  cannot  be  quiet  themselves,  though  nobody  hurts 
them."  "  When  all  is  done  (he  concludes),  human  life  is  at  the 
greatest  and  the  best  but  like  a  froward  child,  that  must  be 
played  with,  and  humoured  a  little,  to  keep  it  quiet,  till  it  falls 
asleep,  and  then  the  care  is  over."  IG 


BARBARA   S- 


On  the  noon  of  the  14th  of  November,  1743  or  4,  I  forget 

which  it  was,  just  as  the  clock  had  struck  one,  Barbara  S , 

with  her  accustomed  punctuality,  ascended  the  long  rambling 
staircase,  with  awkward  interposed  landing-places,  which  led 
to  the  office,  or  rather  a  sort  of  box  with  a  desk  in  it,  whereat  13 
sat  the  then  Treasurer  of  (what  few  of  our  readers  may  remem- 
ber) the  old  Bath  Theatre.  All  over  the  island  it  was  the  cus- 
tom, and  remains  so  I  believe  to  this  day,  for  the  players  to 
receive  their  weekly  stipend  on  the  Saturday.  It  was  not  much 
that  Barbara  had  to  claim.  2G 

The  little  maid  had  just  entered  her  eleventh  year;  but  her 
important  station  at  the  theatre,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  with  the 
benefits  which  she  felt  to  accrue  from  her  pious  application  of 
her  small  earnings,  had  given  an  air  of  womanhood  to  her 
steps  and  to  her  behaviour.  You  would  have  taken  her  to  have  23 
been  at  least  five  years  older. 

Till  latterly  she  had  merely  been  employed  in  choruses,  or 
where  children  were  wanted  to  fill  up  the  scene.  But  the  man- 
ager, observing  a  diligence  and  adroitness  in  her  above  her  age, 
had  for  some  few  months  past  intrusted  to  her  the  performance  30 
of  whole  parts.  You  may  guess  the  self-consequence  of  the 
promoted  Barbara.  She  had  already  drawn  tears  in  young 
Arthur°;  had  rallied  Richard  with  infantine  petulance  in  the 


246  THE    ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

Duke  of  York^ ;  and  in  her  turn  had  rebuked  that  petulance 
•when  she  was  Prince  of  Wales.  She  would  have  done  the 
elder  child  in  Morton's  pathetic  afterpiece  to  the  life ;  but  as 
vet  the  "  Children  in  the  Wood  "  was  not. 

5"^  Long-  after  this  little  girl  was  grown  an  aged  woman,  I  have 
seen  some  of  these  small  parts,  each  making  two  or  three  pages 
at  most,  copied  out  in  the  rudest  hand  of  the  then  prompter, 
who  doubtless  transcribed  a  little  more  carefuU}^  and  fairly  for 
the  grown-up  tragedy  ladies  of  the  establishment.     But  such  as 

10  they  were,  blotted  and  scrawled,  as  for  a  child's  use,  she  kept 
them  all ;  and  in  the  zenith  of  her  after  reputation  it  was  a 
delightful  sight  to  behold  them  bound  up  in  costliest  ^Morocco, 
each  single  — each  small  part  making  a  book  —  with  fine  clasps, 
gilt-splashed,  etc.     She  had  conscientiously  kept  them  as  they 

15  had  been  delivered  to  her;  not  a  blot  had  been  effaced  or  tam- 
pered with.  They  were  precious  to  her  for  their  affecting  re- 
membrancings.  They  were  her  principia,  her  rudiments ;  the 
elementary  atoms;  the  little  steps  by  which  she  pressed  forward 
to  perfection.     "  What,"  she  would  say,  "could  Indian  rubber, 

20  or  a  pumice  stone,  have  done  for  these  darlings  ?  " 

I  am  in  no  hurry  to  begin  my  story  —  indeed  T  have  little  or 
none  to  tell  —  so  I  will  just  mention  an  observation  of  hers 
connected  with  that  interesting  time. 

Not  long  before  she  died  I  had  been  discoursing  with  her  on 

25  the  quantity  of  real  present  emotion  which  a  great  tragic  per- 
former experiences  during  acting.  I  ventured  to  think,  that 
though  in  the  first  instance  such  players  must  have  possessed 
the  feelings  which  they  so  powerfully  called  up  in  others,  yet 
by  frequent  repetition  those  feelings  must  become  deadened  in 

30  great  measure,  and  the  performer  trust  to  the  memory  of  past 
emotion,  rather  than  express  a  present  one.  She  indignantly 
repelled  the  notion,  that  with  a  truly  great  tragedian  the  opera- 
tion, by  which  such  effects  were  produced  upon  an  audience, 
could  ever  degrade  itself   into  what  was  purely  mechanical. 

35  With  much  delicacy,  avoiding  to  instance  in  her  .seZ/'-experience, 
she  told  me,  that  so  long  ago  as  when  she  used  to  play  the  part 
of  the  Little  Son  to  Mrs.  Porter's  Isabella  (I  think  it  was), 
when  that  impressive  actress  has  been  bending  over  her  in 
some  heart-rending  colloquy,  she  has  felt  real  hot  tears  come 


BARBARA    S 247 

trickling  from  her,   which   (to   use   her  powerful  expression) 
have  perfectly  scalded  her  back. 

I  am  not  quite  so  sure  that  it  was  Mrs.  Porter ;  but  it  was 
some  great  actress  of  that  day.  The  name  is  indifferent ;  but 
the  fact  of  the  scalding  tears  I  most  distinctly  remember.  5 

I  was  always  fond  of  the  society  of  players,  and  am  not  sure 
that  an  impediment  in  my  speech  (w^hich  certainly  kept  me 
out  of  the  pulpit),  even  more  than  certain  personal  disqualifi- 
cations, which  are  often  got  over  in  that  profession,  did  not  pre- 
vent me  at  one  time  of  life  from  adopting  it.  I  have  had  the  10 
honour  (I  must  ever  call  it)  once  to  have  been  admitted  to 
the  tea-table  of  Miss  Kelly.  I  have  played  at  serious  whist 
with  Mr.  Liston.  I  have  chatted  with  ever  good-humoured 
Mrs.  Charles  Kemble.  I  have  conversed  as  friend  to  friend 
with  her  accomplished  husband.  I  have  been  indulged  wdth  15 
a  classical  conference  with  Macready° ;  and  with  a  sight  of  the 
Player-picture-gallery,  at  Mr.  JMathews's,  when  the  kind  owner, 
to  remunerate  me  for  my  love  of  the  old  actors  (whom  he  loves 
so  much),  went  over  it  wdth  ine,  supplying  to  his  capital  collec- 
tion, what  alone  the  artist  could  not  give  them  —  voice  ;  and  20 
their  living  motion.  Old  tones,  half-faded,  of  Dodd,  and  Par- 
sons, and  Baddeley,  have  lived  again  for  me  at  his  bidding. 
Only  Edwin  he  could  not  restore  to  me.  I  have  supped  wdth 
;  but  I  am  growing  a  coxcomb. 

As  I  was  about  to  say —  at  the  desk  of  the  then  treasurer  of  25 
the  old  Bath  Theatre  —  not  Diamond's  —  presented  herself  the 
little  Barbara  S . 

The  parents  of  Barbara  had  been  in  reputable  circumstances. 
The  father  had  practised,  I  believe,  as  an  apothecary  in  the 
town.  But  his  practice,  from  causes  which  I  feel  my  own  30 
infirmity  too  sensibly  that  way  to  arraign  —  or  perhaps  from 
that  pure  infelicity  which  accompanies  some  people  in  their 
walk  through  life,  and  which  it  is  impossible  to  lay  at  the  door 
of  imprudence  —  was  now  reduced  to  nothing.  They  were  in 
fact  in  the  very  teeth  of  starvation,  when  tlie  manager,  who  35 
knew  and  respected  them  in  better  days,  took  the  little  ]^arbara 
into  his  company. 

At  the  period  1  commenced  with,  her  slender  earnings  were 
the  sole  support  of  the  family,  including  two  younger  sisters. 


248  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

I  must  throw  a  veil  over  some  mortifying  circumstances. 
Enough  to  say,  that  her  Saturday's  pittance  was  the  only 
chance  of  a  Sunday's  (generally  their  only)   meal  of  meat. 

One  thing  I  will  only  mention,  that  in  some  child's  part, 
5  where  in  her  theatrical  character  she  was  to  sup  off  a  roast 
fowl  (O  joy  to  Barbara !)  some  comic  actor,  who  was  for  the 
night  caterer  for  this  dainty  —  in  the  misguided  humour  of  his 
part,  threw  over  the  dish  such  a  quantity  of  salt  (O  grief  and 
pain  of  heart  to  Barbara  I)  that  when  he  crammed  a  portion  of 
10  it  into  her  mouth,  she  was  obliged  sputteringly  to  reject  it;  and 
what  with  shame  of  her  ill-acted  part,  and  pain  of  real  appetite 
at  missing  such  a  dainty,  her  little   heart  sobbed  almost  to 
breaking,  till  a  flood  of  tears,  which  the  well-fed  spectators 
were  totally  unable  to  comprehend,  mercifidly  relieved  her. 
15      This  was   the   little  starved,  meritorious   maid,  who  stood 
before  old  Ravenscroft,  the  treasurer,  for  her  Saturday's  pay- 
ment. 

Ravenscroft  was  a  man,  I  have  heard  many  old  theatrical 
people  besides  herself  say,  of  all  men  least  calculated  for 
20  a  treasurer.  He  had  no  head  for  accounts,  paid  away  at  ran- 
dom, kept  scarce  any  books,  and  summing  up  at  the  week's 
end,  if  he  found  himself  a  pound  or  so  deficient,  blest  himself 
that  it  was  no  worse. 

Xow  Barbara's  weekly  stipend  was  a  bare  half -guinea.  —  By 
25  mistake  he  j^opped  into  her  hand  a  —  whole  one. 

Barbara  tripped  away. 

She  was  entirely  unconscious  at  first  of  the  mistake  :   God 
knows,  Ravenscroft  would  never  have  discovered  it. 

But  when  she  had  got  down  to  the  first  of  those  uncouth 
;«)  landing-places,  she  became  sensible  of  an  unusual  weight  of 
metal  pressing  her  little  hand. 

Xow  mark  fhe  dilemma. 

She  was  by  nature  a  good  child.  From  her  parents  and  those 
about  her,  she  had  imbibed  no  contrary  influence.  But  then 
35  they  had  taught  her  nothing.  Poor  men's  smoky  cabins  are 
not  always  porticoes  of  moral  philosophy.  This  lititle  maid  had 
no  instinct  to  evil,  but  then  she  might  be  said  to  have  no  fixed 
principle.  She  had  heard  honesty  commended,  but  never 
dreamed  of  its  application  to  herself.     She  thought  of  it  as  some- 


BARBARA    S 249 

thing  which  concerned  grown  up  people,  —  men  and  women. 
She  had  never  known  temptation,  or  thought  of  preparing 
resistance  against  it. 

Her  first  impulse  was  to  go  back  to  the  old  treasurer,  and 
explain  to  him  his  blunder.     He  was  already  so  confused  with  5 
age,  besides  a  natural  want  of  punctuality,  that  she  would  have 
had  some  difficultv  in  making  him  understand  it.     She  saw  that 
in  an  instant.     And  then  it  w^as  such  a  bit  of  money!  and  then 
the  image  of  a  larger  allowance  of  butcher's  meat  on  their  table 
the  next  day  came  across  her,  till  her  little  eyes  glistened,  and  10 
her  mouth  moistened.     But  then  Mr.  Kavenscroft  had  always 
been  so  good-natured,  had  stood  her  friend  behind  the  scenes, 
and  even  recommended  her  promotion  to  some  of  her  little  parts. 
But  again  the   old  man  was  reputed  to  be  worth  a  world  of 
money.     He  was  supposed  to  have  fifty  pounds  a  year  clear  of  15 
the  theatre.     And  then  came  staring  upon  her  the  figures  of  her 
little  stockingless  and  shoeless  sisters.     And  when  she  looked  at 
her  own  neat  white  cotton  stockings,  which  her  situation  at  the 
theatre  had  made  it  indispensable  for  her  mother  to  provide  for 
her,  with  hard  straining  and  pinching  from  the  family  stock,  20 
and  thought  how  glad  she  should  be  to  cover  their  poor  feet 
with  the  same  —  and  how  then  they  could  accompany  her  to  re- 
hearsals, which  they  had  hitherto  been  precluded  from  doing, 
by  reason  of  their  unfashionable  attire,  —  in  these  thoughts  she 
reached  the  second  landing-place  —  the  second,  I  mean,  from  25 
the  top  —  for  there  was  still  another  left  to  traverse. 

[N'ow  virtue  support  Barbara  ! 

And  that  never-failing  friend  did  step  in  —  for  at  that  mo- 
ment a  strength  not  her  own,  I  have  heard  her  say,  was  revealed 
to  her  —  a  reason  above  reasoning  —  and  without  her  own  30 
agency,  as  it  seemed  (for  she  never  felt  her  feet  to  move),  she 
found  herself  transported  back  to  the  individual  desk  she  had 
just  quitted,  and 'hei'  hand  in  the  old  hand  of  Ravenscroft,  who 
in  silence  took  back  the  refunded  treasure,  and  who  had  been 
sitting  (good  man)  insensible  to  the  lapse  of  minutes,  which  to  35 
her  were  anxious  ages;  and  from  that  moment  a  deep  peace 
fell  upon  her  heart,  and  she  knew  the  quality  of  honesty. 

A   year   or   two's  unrepining  application    to    her  piofessiou 
brightened  up  the  feet,  and  the  prospects,  of  her  little  sisters, 


250  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

set  the  whole  family  upon  their  legs  again,  and  released  her 
from  the  difficulty  of  discussing  moral  dogmas  upon  a  landing- 
place. 

I  have  heard  her  say,  that  it  was  a  surprise,  not  much  short 
5  of  mortification  to  her,  to  see  the  coolness  with  which  the  old 
man  pocketed  the  difference,  which  had  caused  her  such  mortal 
throes. 

This  anecdote  of  herself  I  had  in  the  year  1800,  from  the 
mouth  of  the  late  Mrs.  Crawford,^  then  sixty-seven  years  of  age 

10  (she  died  soon  after)  ;  and  to  her  struggles  upon  this  childish 
occasion  I  have  sometimes  ventured  to  think  her  indebted  for 
that  power  of  rending  the  heart  in  the  representation  of  con- 
flicting emotions,  for  which  in  after  years  she  was  considered  as 
little  inferior  (if  at  all  so  in  the  part  of  Lady  Randolph)  even 

15  to  Mrs.  Siddons. 


THE   TOMBS   IX   THE   ABBEY 

IX   A   LETTER    TO    R S ,    ESQ. 

Though  in  some  points  of  doctrine,  and  perhaps  of  disci- 
pHne,  I  am  diffident  of  lending  a  perfect  assent  to  that  church 
which  you  have  so  worthily  hisforijied,  yet  may  the  ill  time 
never  come  to  me,  when  with  a  chilled  heart  or  a  portion  of  ir- 

20  reverent  sentiment,  1  shall  enter  her  beautiful  and  tirne-hallowed 
Edifices.  Judge  then  of  my  mortification  when,  after  attending 
the  choral  anthems  of  last  Wednesday  at  Westminster,  and 
being  desirous  of  renewing  my  acquaintance,  after  lapsed  years, 
with  the  tombs  and  antiquities  there.  I  found  myself  excluded ; 

25  turned  out  like  a  dog,  or  some  profane  person,-into  the  common 
street,  with  feelings  not  very  congenial  to  the  place,  or  to  the 
solemn  service  which  I  had  been  listening  to.  It  was  a  jar  after 
that  music. 

iThe  maiden  name  of  this  lady  was  Street,  which  she  changed,  by 
successive  marriages,  for  those  of  Dancer.  Barrv,  and  Crawford.  She 
was  Mrs.  Crawford,  and  a  third  time  a  widow,  when  I  knew  her. 


THE    TOMBS    IN    THE    ABBEY  251 

You  had  your  education  at  Westminster;  and  doubtless 
among  those  dim  aisles  and  cloisters,  you  must  have  gathered 
much  of  that  devotional  feeling  in  those  young  years,  on  which 
your  purest  mind  feeds  still  —  and  may  it  feed  !  The  antiquarian 
spirit,  strong  in  you,  and  gracefully  blending  ever  with  the  reli-  5 
gious,  may  have  been  sown  in  you  among  those  wrecks  of  splen- 
did mortality.  You  owe  it  to  the  place  of  your  education;  you 
owe  it  to  your  learned  fondness  for  the  architecture  of  your  an- 
cestors; yon  owe  it  to  the  venerableness  of  your  ecclesiastical 
establishment,  which  is  daily  lessened  and  called  in  question  IQ 
through  these  practices — to  speak  aloud  your  sense  of  them; 
never  to  desist  raising  your  voice  against  them,  till  they  be 
totally  done  away  with  and  abolished ;  till  the  doors  of  West- 
minster Abbey  be  no  longer  closed  against  the  decent,  though 
low-in-purse,  enthusiast,  or  blameless  devotee,  who  must  commit  15 
an  injury  against  his  family  economy,  if  he  would  be  indulged 
with  a  bare  admission  within  its  walls.  You  owe  it  to  the  de- 
cencies which  you  wish  to  see  maintained  in  its  impressive  ser- 
vices, that  our  Cathedral  be  no  longer  an  object  of  inspection  to 
the  poor  at  those  times  only,  in  which  they  must  rob  from  their  20 
attendance  on  the  worship  every  minute  which  they  can  bestow 
upon  the  fabric.  In  vain  the  public  prints  have  taken  up  this 
subject,  in  vain  such  poor  nameless  writers  as  myself  express 
their  indignation.  A  word  from  you,  Sir,  —  a  hint  in  your 
Journal  —  would  be  sufficient  to  fling  open  the  doors  of  the  25 
Beautiful  Temple  again,  as  we  can  remember  them  when  we 
were  boys.  At  that  time  of  life,  what  would  the  imaginative 
faculty  (such  as  it  is)  in  both  of  us,  have  suffered,  if  the  entrance 
to  so  much  reflection  had  been  obstructed  by  the  demand  of  so 
much  silver  !  —  If  we  had  scraped  it  up  to  gain  an  occasional  ad-  30 
mission  (as  we  certainly  should  have  done),  would  the  sight  of 
those  old  tombs  have  been  as  impressive  to  us  (while  we  have  been 
weighing  anxiously  prudence  against  sentiment)  as  when  the  gates 
stood  open  as  those  of  the  adjacent  Park ;  when  we  could  walk 
in  at  any  time,  as  the  mood  brought  us,  for  a  shorter  or  longer  35 
time,  as  that  lasted?  Is  the  being  shown  over  a  place  the  same 
as  silently  for  ourselves  detecting  the  genius  of  it?  In  no  part 
of  our  beloved  Abbey  now  can  a  peison  flnd  entrance  (out  of 
service-time)  under  the  sum  of  tivo  shillings.     The  rich  and  the 


252  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

great  will  smile  at  the  anticlimax,  presumed  to  lie  in  these  two 
short  words.  But  you  can  tell  them,  Sir,  how  much  quiet  worth, 
how  much  capacity  for  enlarged  feeling,  how  much  taste  and 
genius,  may  coexist,  especially  in  youth,  with  a  purse  incompe- 
5  tent  to  this  demand.  —  A  respected  friend  of  ours,  during  his 
late  visit  to  the  metropolis,  presented  himself  for  admission  to 
St.  Paul's.  At  the  same  time  a  decently-clothed  man,  with  as 
decent  a  wife  and  child,  were  bargaining  for  the  same  indulgence. 
The  price  was  only  twopence  each  person.     The  poor  but  decent 

10  man  hesitated,  desirous  to  go  in;  but  there  were  three  of  them, 
and  he  turned  away  reluctantly.  Perhaps  he  wished  to  have 
seen  the  tomb  of  Xelson.°  Perhaps  the  Interior  of  the  Cathe- 
dral was  his  object.  But  in  the  state  of  his  finances,  even  six- 
pence might  reasonably  seem  too  much.     Tell  the  Aristocracy 

15  of  the  country  (no  man  can  do  it  more  impressively)  ;  instruct 
them  of  what  value  these  insignificant  pieces  of  money,  .these 
minims  to  their  sight,  may  be  to  their  humbler  brethren.  Shame 
these  Sellers  out  of  the  Temple.  Stifle  not  the  suggestions  of 
your  better  nature  with  the  pretext,  that  an  indiscriminate  ad- 

20  mission  would  expose  the  Tombs  to  violation.  Remember  your 
boy-days.  Did  you  ever  see,  or  hear,  of  a  mob  in  the  Abbey, 
while  it  was  free  to  all  ?  Do  the  rabble  come  there,  or  trouble 
their  heads  about  such  speculations?  It  is  all  that  you  can  do 
to  drive  them  into  your  churches ;  they  do  not  voluntarily  offer 

25  themselves.  They  have,  alas  I  no  passion  for  antiquities ;  for 
tomb  of  king  or  prelate,  sage  or  poet.  If  they  had,  they  would 
be  no  longer  the  rabble. 

For  forty  years  that  I  have  known  the  Fabric,  the  only  well- 
attested  charge  of  violation  adduced  has  been  —  a  ridiculous 

30  dismemberment  committed  upon  the  efiigy  of  that  amiable  spy. 
Major  Andre.  And  is  it  for  this  —  the  wanton  mischief  of  soine 
school-boy,  fired  perhaps  with  raw  notions  of  Transatlantic 
Freedom  —  or  the  remote  possibility  of  such  a  mischief  occur- 
ring again,  so  easily  to  be  prevented  by  stationing  a  constable 

35  within  the  walls,  if  the  vergers  are  incompetent  to  the  duts'  — 
is  it  upon  such  wretched  pretences  that  the  people  of  England 
are  made  to  pay  a  new  Peter's  Pence,  so  long  abrogated;  or 
must  content  themselves  with  contemplating  the  ragged  Exte- 
rior of  their  Cathedral?     The  mischief  was  done  about  the  time 


AMICUS    REDIVIVUS  253 

that  you  were  a  scholar  there.     Do  you  know  anything  about 
the  unfortunate  relic  ?  — 


AMICUS  REDIVIVUS 

"Where  were  ye,  Nymphs,  when  the  remorseless  deep 
Clos'd  o'er  the  head  of  your  loved  Lycidas  ? 

I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  experienced  a  stranger  sensation  5 
than  on  seeing  my  old  friend,  G.  D.,''  who  had  been  paying  me 
a  morning  visit,  a  few  Sundays  back,  at  my  cottage  at  Isling- 
ton,°  upon  taking  leave,  instead  of  turning  down  the  right-hand 
path  by  which  he  had  entered  —  with  staff  in  hand,  and  at 
noonday,  deliberately  march  right  forwards  into  the  midst  of  Ifl 
the  stream  that  runs  by  us,  and  totally  disappear. 

A  spectacle  like  this  at  dusk  would  have  been  appalling 
enough  ;  but,  in  the  broad,  open  daylight,  to  witness  such  an 
unreserved  motion  towards  self-destruction  in  a  valued  friend, 
took  from  me  all  power  of  speculation.  15 

How  I  found  my  feet  I  know  not.  Consciousness  was  quite 
gone.  Some  spirit,  not  my  own,  whirled  me  to  the  spot.  I  re- 
member nothing  but  the  silvery  apparition  of  a  good  white  head 
emerging ;  nigh  which  a  staff  (the  hand  unseen  that  wielded 
it)  pointed  upwards,  as  feeling  for  the  skies.  In  a  moment  (if  20 
time  was  in  that  time)  he  was  on  my  shoulders,  and  I — freighted 
with  a  load  more  precious  than  his  who  bore  Anehises.'^ 

And  here  I  cannot  but  do  justice  to  the  officious  zeal  of 
sundry  passers-by,  who,  albeit  arriving  a  little  too  late  to  par- 
ticipate in  the  honours  of  the  rescue,  in  philantiiropic  shoals  25 
came  thronging  to  communicate  their  advice  as  to  the  recovery; 
prescribing  variously  the  application,  or  non-application,  of  salt, 
etc.,  to  the  person  oi  the  patient.  Life,  meantime,  was  ebbing 
fast  away,  amidst  the  stifle  of  conflicting  judgments,  when  one, 
more  sagacious  than  the  rest,  by  a  bright  thought,  pi-oposed;30 
sending  for  the  Doctor.  Trite  as  the  counsel  was,  and  impos- 
siWle,  as  one  should  think,  to  be  missed  on, —  shall  I  confess? 
—  in  this  emergency  it  was  to  me  as  if  an  Angel  hail  spoken. 


254  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Great  previous  exertions  —  and  mine  had  not  been  inconsider- 
able—  are  commonly  followed  by  a  debility  of  purpose.  This 
was  a  moment  of  irresolution. 

MoNOCULUS  —  for  so,  in  default  of  catching  his  true  name,  I 

5  choose  to  designate  the  medical  gentleman  who  now  appeared 
—  is  a  grave,  middle-aged  person,  who,  without  having  studied 
at  the  college,  or  truckled  to  the  pedantry  of  a  diploma,  hath 
employed  a  great  portion  of  his  valuable  time  in  experimental 
processes  upon  the  bodies  of  unfortunate   fellow-creatures,  in 

10  whom  the  vital  spark,  to  mere  vulgar  thinking,  would  seem 
extinct  and  lost  for  ever.  He  omitteth  no  occasion  of  obtruding 
his  services,  from  a  case  of  common  surfeit-suffocation  to  the 
ignoble r  obstructions,  sometimes  induced  by  a  too  wilful  appli- 
cation of  the  plant  Cannabis^  outwardly.     But  though  he  de- 

15  clineth  not  altogether  these  drier  extinctions,  his  occupation 
tendeth  for  the  most  part  to  water-practice ;  for  the  convenience 
of  which,  he  hath  judiciously  fixed  his  quarters  near  the  grand 
repository  of  the  stream  mentioned,  where,  day  and  night,  from 
his  little  watch-tower,  at  the  Middleton's  Head,°  he  list-eneth  to 

20  detect  the  wn-ecks  of  drowned  mortality  —  partly,  as  he  saith,  to 
be  upon  the  spot  — and  partly,  because  the  liquids  which  he  useth 
to  prescribe  to  himself  and  his  patients,  on  these  distressing 
occasions,  are  ordinarily  more  conveniently  to  be  found  at 
these  common  hostelries  than  in  the  shops  and  phials  6f  the 

25  apothecaries.  His  ear  hath  arrived  to  such  finesse  by  practice, 
that  it  is  reported  he  can  distinguish  a  plunge  at  a  half  furlong 
distance  ;  and  can  tell  if  it  be  casual  or  deliberate.  He  weareth 
a  medal,  suspended  over  a  suit,  originally  of  a  sad  brown,  but 
which,  by  time,  and  frequency  of   nightly  divings,  has   been 

;X)  dinged  into  a  true  professionalsable.  He  passeth  by  the  name 
of  Doctor,  and  is  remarkable  for  wanting  his  left  eye.  His 
remedy — after  a  sufficient  application  of  warm  blankets,  fric- 
tion, etc.,  is  a  simple  tumbler,  or  more,  of  the  purest  Cognac, 
with  water,  made  as  hot  as  the  convalescent  can  bear  it.    Where 

35  he  findeth,  a's  in  the  case  of  my  friend,  a  squeamish  subject,  he 
condescendeth  to  be  the  taster ;  and  showeth,  by  his  own  ex- 
ample, the  innocuous  nature  of  the  prescription.  "  Nothing  can 
be  more  kind  or  encouraging  than  this  procedure.  It  addeth 
confidence  to  the  patient,  to  see  his  medical  adviser  go  hand  in 


AMICUS   REDivirus  255 

hand  with  himself  in  the  remedy.  When  the  doctor  swalloweth 
his  own  draught,  what  peevish  invalid  can  refuse  to  pledge  him 
in  the  potion  ?  In  fine,  Moxoculus  is  a  humane,  sensible  man, 
who,  for  a  slender  pittance,  scarce  enough  to  sustain  life,  is 
content  to  wear  it  out  in  the  endeavour  to  save  the  lives  of  5 
others  —  his  pretensions  so  moderate,  that  with  difficulty  I 
could  press  a  crown  upon  him,  for  the  price  of  restoring  the 
existence  of  such  an  invaluable  creature  to  society  as  G.  D. 

It  was  pleasant  to  observe  the  effect  of  the  subsiding  alarm 
upon  the  nerves  of  the  dear  absentee.     It  seemed  to  have  given  10 
a  shake  to  memory,  calling  up  notice  after  notice,  of  all  the 
providential  deliverances  he  had  experienced  in  the  course  of 
his    long   and   innocent   life.     Sitting    up  on  my  couch — my 
couch  which,  naked  and  void  of   furniture    hitherto,   for   the 
salutary  repose  which  it  administered,  shall  be  honoured  with  15 
costly  valance,  at  some  price,  and  henceforth  be  a  state-bed  at 
Colebrook,  —  he  discoursed  of  marvellous  escapes — by  careless- 
ness of  nurses  —  by  pails  of  gelid,  and  kettles  of  the  boiling 
element,  in  infancy — by  orchard  pranks,  and  snapping  twigs, 
in  schoolboy  frolics  —  by  descent  of  tiles  at  Trumpington,  and  20 
of  heavier  tomes  at  Pembroke  —  by  studious  watchings,  induc- 
ing frightful  vigilance  —  by  want,  and  the  fear  of  want,  and  all 
the  sore  throbbings  of  the  learned  head.  —  Anon,  he  would 
burst  out  into  little  fragments  of  chanting — of  songs  long  ago 
—  ends  of  deliverance  hymns,   not  remembered   before    since  25 
childhood,  but  coming  up  now,  when  his  heart  was  made  tender 
as  a  child's  —  for  the  tremor  cordis  °  in  the  retrospect  of  a  recent 
deliverance,  as  in  a  case  of  impending  danger,  acting  upon  an 
itmocent  heart,  will  produce  a  self-tenderness,  which  we  should 
do  ill    to  christen    cowardice;    and  Shakspeare,    in   the   latter  30 
crisis,  has  made  his  good  Sir  Hugh°  to  remember  the  sitting  by 
Babylon,  and  to  mutter  of  shallow  rivers. 

Waters  of  Sir  Hugh  ]Middleton  —  what  a  spark  you  were  like 
to  have  extinguished  for  ever !  Your  salul)rious  streams  to  this 
City,  for  now^  near  two  centuries,  would  hardly  have  atoned  'AS 
for  what  you  were  in  a  moment  wasliing  away.  Mockery  of  a 
river — liquid  artifice  —  wretched  conduit!  henceforth  rank 
with  canals  and  sluggish  aqueducts.  Was  it  for  this  that,  sin  it 
in  boyhood  with  the  explorations  of  that  Abyssinian  traveller,° 


256  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

I  paced  the  vales  of  Annvell  to  explore  your  tributary  springs, 
to  trace  your  salutary  waters  sparkling  through  green  Hertford- 
shire, and  cultured  Enfield  parks?  —  Ye  have  no  swans°  —  no 
Xaiads  —  no  river  God  —  or  did  the  benevolent  hoary  aspect  of 
5  my  friend  tempt  ye  to  suck  him  in,  that  ye  also  might  have  the 
tutelary  genius  of  your  waters  ? 

Had  he  been  drowned  in  Cam,  there  would  have  been  some 
consonancy  in  it;  but  what  willows  had  ye  to  wave  and  rustle 
over  his  moist  sepulture  ?  —  or,  having  no  name,  besides  that 
10  unmeaning  assumption  of  eternal  novifij,  did  ye  think  to  get  one 
by  the  noble  prize,  and  henceforth  to  be  termed  the  Stream 
Dyerian  ? 

And  could  such  spacious  virtue  find  a  grave 
Beneath  the  imposthumed  bubble  of  a  wave  ? 

15  I  protest,  George,  you  shall  not  venture  out  again  —  no,  not 
by  daylight  —  without  a  sufficient  pair  of  spectacles  —  in  your 
musing  moods  especially.  Your  absence  of  mind  we  have 
borne,  till  your  presence  of  body  came  to  be  called  in  question 
by  it.     Y^ou  shall  not  go  wandering  into   Euripus  with  Aris- 

20totle,°  if  we  can  help  it.  Fie,  man,  to  turn  dipper  at  your 
years,  after  your  many  tracts  in  favour  of    sprinkling  only  I 

I  have  nothing  but  water  in  my  head  o'nights  since  this 
frightful  accident.  Sometimes  I  am  with  Clarence"  in  his 
dream.     At  others,  I  behold  Christian  beginning  to  sink,  and 

25  crying  out  to  his  good  brother  Hopeful  (that  is,  to  me),  '-I 
sink  in  deep  waters ;  the  billows  go  over  my  head,  all  the  waves 
go  over  me.  Selah."  Then  I  have  before  me  Palinurus,°  just 
letting  go  the  steerage.  I  cry  out  too  late  to  save.  Xext  follow 
—  a  mournful  procession — suicidal  faces,  saved  against  their 

:^K)  will  from  drowning;  dolefully  trailing  a  length  of  reluctant 
gratefulness,  with  ropy  weeds"^  pendent  from  locks  of  wat^het 
hue  —  constrained  Lazari  —  Pluto's  half-subjects  —  stolen  fees 
from  the  grave  —  bilking  Charon  of  his  fare.  At  their  head 
Arion  —  or  is  it  G.  D.  ?  —  in  his  singing  garments  marcheth 

35  singly,  with  harp  in  hand,  and  votive  garland,  which  Machaon 
(or  Dr.  Hawes")  snatcheth  straight,  intending  to  suspend  it  to 
the  stern  God  of  Sea.     Then  follow  dismal  "streams  of  Lethe. 


SOME    SONNETS    OF    SIR    PHILIP    SYDNEY        257 

in  which  the  half-drenched  on  earth  are  constramed  to  drown 
downright,  by  wharfs  w^here  Ophelia  twice  acts  her  muddy 
death. 

And,  doubtless,  there  is  some  notice  in  that  invisible  world 
when  one  of  us  approacheth  (as  my  friend  did  so  lately)  to  5 
their  inexorable  precincts.  When  a  soul  knocks  once,  twice,  at 
Death's  door,  the  sensation  aroused  w'ithin  the  palace  must 
be  considerable ;  and  the  grim  Feature,  by  modern  science  so 
often  dispossessed  of  his  prey,  must  have  learned  by  this  time 
to  pity  Tantalus.  10 

A  pulse  assuredly  was  felt  along  the  line  of  the  Elysiau 
shades,  when  the  near  arrival  of  G.  D.  was  announced  by  no 
equivocal  indications.  From  their  seat§  of  AsphodeP  arose  the 
gentler  and  the  graver  ghosts  —  poet,  or  historian — of  Grecian 
or  of  Roman  lore  —  to  crown  wdth  unfading  chaplets  the  half- 15 
finished  love-labours  of  their  unwearied  scholiast.  Him  Mark- 
land°  expected  —  him  Tyrwhitt''  hoped  to  encounter  —  him  the 
sweet  lyrist  of  Peter  House,  whom   he  had  barely  seen  upon 

earth,!  ^yith  newest  airs  prepared  to  greet ;  and,  patron  of 

the  gentle  Christ's  boy,  —  w4io  should  have  been  his  patron  20 
through  life  —  the  mild  Askew,°  with  longing  aspirations, 
leaned  foremost  from  his  venerable  yEsculapian  chair,  to  wel- 
come into  that  happy  company  the  matured  virtues  of  the  man, 
whose  tender  scions  in  the  boy  he  himself  upon  earth  had  so 
prophetically  fed  and  watered.  25 


SOME   SONNETS   OF   SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY 

Sydney's  Sonnets  —  I  speak  of  the  best  of  them  —  are 
among  the  very  best  of  their  sort.  They  fall  below  the  plain 
moral  dignity,  the  sanctity,  and  high  yet  modest  spirit  of  self- 
approval,  of  Milton,  in  his  compositions  of  a  similar  structure. 
'J'hey  are  in  truth  what  Milton,  censuring  the  Arcadia,  says  of  :i() 
that  work  (to  which  they  are  a  sort  of  after-tune  or  ajiplica- 
tion),  "vain  and  amatorious  "  enough,  yet  the  things  in  their 

1  Graium  tantum  vidit. 


258  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

kind  (as  he  confesses  to  be  true  of  the  romance)  may  be  "  full 
of  worth  and  wit."  They  savour  of  the  Courtier,  it  must  be 
allowed,  and  not  of  the  Commonwealthsman.  But  Milton  was 
a  Courtier  when  he  wrote  the  ]SIasque  at  Lndlow  Castle,  and 
5  still  more  a  Courtier  when  he  composed  the  Arcades.  When 
the  national  struggle  was  to  begin,  he  becomingly  cast  these 
vanities  behind  him ;  and  if  the  order  of  time  had  thrown  Sir 
Philip  upon  the  crisis  which  preceded  the  Revolution,  there  is 
no  reason  why  he  should  not  have  acted  the  same  part  in  that 

lOpiuergency,  which  has  glorified  the  name  of  a  later  Sydney."^ 
He  did  not  want  for  plainness  or  boldness  of  spirit.  His  letter 
on  the  French  match  may  testify  he  could  speak  his  mind  freely 
to  Princes.     The  times  did  not  call  him  to  the  scaffold. 

The  Sonnets  which  we  oftenest  call  to  mind  of  Milton  were 

15  the  compositions  of  his  maturest  years.  Those  of  Sydney,  which 
I  am  about  to  produce,  were  written  in  the  very  heyday  of  his 
blood.  They  are  stuck  full  of  amorous  fancies  —  far-fetched 
conceits,  befitting  his  occupation ;  for  True  Love  thinks  no 
labour  to  send  out  Thoughts   npon  the  vast  and  more  than 

20  Indian  voyages,  to  bring  home  rich  pearls,  outlandish  wealth, 
gums,  jewels,  spicery,  to  sacrifice  in  self-depreciating  simili- 
tudes, as  shadows  oi  true  amiabilities  in  the  Beloved,  We 
must  be  Lovers  —  or  at  least  the  cooling  touch  of  time,  the 
circum  prcecordia  frigus°  must  not  have  so  damped  our  faculties, 

25  as  to  take  away  our  recollection  that  we  were  once  so  —  before 
we  can  duly  appreciate  the  glorious  vanities  and  graceful 
hyperboles  of  the  passion.  The  images  which  lie  before  our 
feet  (though  by  some  accounted  the  only  natural)  are  least 
natural  for  the  high  Sydnean  love  to  express  its  fancies  by. 

30  They  may  serve  for  the  loves  of  Tibullus,  or  the  dear  Author'^ 
of  the  Schoohnistress ;  for  jDassions  that  creep  and  whine  in 
Elegies  and  Pastoral  Ballads.  I  am  sure  Milton  never  loved 
at  this  rate.  I  am  afraid  some  of  his  addresses  (ad  Leonoram  I 
mean)  have  rather  erred  on  the  farther  side ;  and  that  the  poet 

35  came  not  much  short  of  a  religious  indecorum,  when  he  could 
thus  apostrophize  a  singing-girl : 

Angelus  unieuique  suus  (sic  credite  gentes) 
Obtigit  aethereis  ales  ab  ordinibus. 


SOME    SONNETS    OF    SIR    PHILIP    SYDNEY       259 

Quid  minim,  Leonora,  tibi  si  gloria  major, 

Nam  tua  praesentem  vox  sonat  ipsa  Deum? 
Aut  Deus,  aut  vacui  certe  mens  tertia  coeli 

Per  tua  secrete  guttura  serpit  agens ; 
Serpit  agens,  facilisque  docet  mortalia  corda  5 

Sensim  immortali  assuescere  posse  sono. 
Quod  si  cuncta  quidem  Deus  est,  per  cunctaque  fusus. 

In  te  una  loquituk,  C/ETera  mutus  habet. 

This  is  loving  in  a  strange  fashion;  and  it  requires  some 
candour  of  construction  (besides  the  slight  darkening  of  a  dead  10 
language)  to  cast  a  veil  over  the  ugly  appearance  of  something- 
very  like  blasphemy  in  the  last  two  verses.  I  think  the  Lover 
"would  have  been  staggered  if  he  had  gone  about  to  express  the 
same  thought  in  English.  I  am  sure  Sydney  has  no  flights  like 
this.  His  extravaganzas  do  not  strike  at  the  sky,  though  he  15 
takes  leave  to  adopt  the  pale  Dian  into  a  fellowship  with 
his  mortal  passions. 


■With  how  sad  steps,  O  Moon,  thou  climb'st  the  skies 

How  silently ;  and  with  how  wan  a  face ! 

AYhat!  may  it  be,  that  even  in  heavenly  place  20 

That  busy  Archer  his  sharp  arrow  tries  ? 

Sure,  if  that  long-with-love-acquainted  eyes 

Can  judge  of  love,  thou  feel'st  a  lover's  case; 

I  read  it  in  thy  looks ;  thy  languisht  grace 

To  me,  that  feel  the  like,  thy  state  descries.  25 

Then,  even  of  fellowship,  O  Moon,  tell  me, 

Is  constant  love  deem'd  there  but  want  of  wit? 

Are  beauties  there  as  proud  as  here  they  be  ? 

Do  they  above  love  to  be  loved,  and  yet 

Those  lovers  scorn,  whom  that  love  doth  possess?  30 

Do  they  call  virtue  there —  ungratefulness? 

The  last  line  of  this  poem  is  a  little  obscured  by  transposition. 
He  means,  Do  they  call  ungratefulness  there  a  virtue? 


Come,  Sleep,  O  Sleep,  the  certain  knot  of  peace, 

The  baiting-place  of  wit,  the  balm  of  woe,  35 


260  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 


The  poor  mau's  wealth,  the  prisouer's  release, 
The  indifferent  judge  between  the  high  and  low; 
With  shield  of  proof  shield  me  from  out  the 
Of  those  fierce  darts  despair  at  me  doth  throw 
5  O  make  in  me  those  civil  wars  to  cease  : 

I  will  good  tribute  pay,  if  thou  do  so. 
Take  thou  of  me  sweet  pillows,  sweetest  bed : 
A  chamber  deaf  to  noise,  and  blind  to  light ; 
A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 
10  And  if  these  things,  as  being  thine  by  right, 

Move  not  thy  heavy  grace,  thou  shalt  in  me, 
Livelier  than  elsewhere,  Stella's  image  see, 


The  curious  wits,  seeing  dull  pensiveness 
Bewray  itself  in  my  long-settled  eyes, 

15  Whence  those  same  fumes  of  melancholy  rise, 

With  idle  pains,  and  missing  aim,  do  guess. 
Some,  that  know  how  my  spring  I  did  address, 
Deem  that  my  Muse  some  fruit  of  knowledge  plies. 
Others,  because  the  Prince  my  service  tries, 

20  Think,  that  I  think  state  errors  to  redress; 

But  harder  judges  judge,  ambition's  rage, 
Scourge  of  itself,  still  climbing  slippery  place, 
Holds  my  young  brain  captiv'd  in  golden  cage. 
O  fools,  or  over-wise!  alas,  the  race 

25  Of  all  my  thoughts  had  neither  stop  nor  start, 

But  only  Stella's  eyes,  and  Stella's  heart. 


Because  I  oft  in  dark  abstracted  guise 
Seem  most  alone  in  greatest  company, 
With  dearth  of  words,  or  answers  quite  awry, 

30  To  them  that  would  make  speech  of  speech  arise; 

They  deem,  and  of  their  doom  the  rumour  Hies, 
That  poison  foul  of  bubbling  Pride  doth  lie 
So  in  my  swelling  breast,  that  only  I 
Fawn  on  myself,  and  others  do  despise; 

35  Yet  Pride,  1  think,  doth  not  my  Soul  possess, 

Which  looks  too  oft  in  his  unflattering  glass; 
But  one  worse  fault  —  Ambition— I  confess. 
That  makes  me  oft  my  best  friends  overpass. 
Unseen,  unheard  —  while  Thought  to  highest  place 

40  Bends  all  his  powers,  even  unto  Stella's  grace. 

1  Press. 


SOME    SONNETS    OF    SIR    PHILIP    SYDNEY       261 


Having  this  day,  my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance, 

Guided  so  well  that  I  obtained  the  prize, 

Both  by  the  judgment  of  the  English  eyes. 

And  of  some  sent  from  that  sweet  enemy,  —  France; 

Horsemen  my  skill  in  horsemanship  advance ;  5 

To^-nsfolk  my  strength  ;  a  daintier  judge  applies 

His  praise  to  sleight,  which  from  good  use  doth  rise ; 

Some  lucky  wits  impute  it  but  to  chance ; 

Others,  because  of  both  sides  I  do  take 

My  blood  from  them,  who  did  excel  in  this,  10 

Think  Nature  me  a  man  of  arms  did  make. 

How  far  they  shot  awry  !  the  true  cause  is, 

Stella  look'd  on,  and  from  her  heavenly  face 

Sent  forth  the  beams  which  made  so  fair  my  race. 


In  martial  sports  I  had  my  cunning  tried,  15 

And  yet  to  break  more  staves  did  me  address, 

While  with  the  people's  shouts  (I  must  confess) 

Youth,  luck,  and  praise,  even  fiU'd  my  veins  with  pride  — 

When  Cupid  having  me  (his  slave)  descried 

In  Mars's  livery,  prancing  in  the  press,  20 

"  What  now,  Sir  Fool  1  "  said  he :  "  I  would  no  less: 

Look  here,  I  say."     I  look'd,  and  Stella  spied, 

Who  hard  by  made  a  window  send  forth  light. 

My  heart  then  quaked,  then  dazzled  were  mine  eyes; 

One  hand  forgot  to  rule,  th'  other  to  fight ;  25 

Nor  trumpet's  sound  I  heard,  nor  friendly  cries. 

My  foe  came  on,  and  beat  the  air  for  me  — 

Till  that  her  blush  made  me  my  shame  to  see. 


No  more,  my  dear,  no  more  these  counsels  try; 

0  give  my  passions  leave  to  run  their  race ;  30 
Let  Fortune  lay  on  me  her  worst  disgrace ; 

Let  folk  o'ercharged  with  brain  against  me  cry; 

Let  clouds  bedim  my  face,  break  in  mine  eye; 

Let  me  no  steps,  but  of  lost  labour,  trace ; 

Let  all  the  world  with  scorn  recount  my  case —  35 

But  do  not  will  me  from  my  love  to  fly. 

1  do  not  envy  Aristotle's  wit, 

Nor  do  aspire  to  Cjesar's  bleeding  fame; 

Nor  aught  do  care,  though  some  above  me  sit; 


262  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 


Nor  hope,  nor  ^ish,  another  course  to  frame, 
But  that  which  once  may  win  thy  cruel  heart: 
Thou  art  my  wit,  and  thou  my  virtue  art. 


Love  still  a  boy,  and  oft  a  wanton,  is, 
5  School'd  only  by  his  mother's  tender  eye ; 

What  wonder,  then,  if  he  his  lesson  miss, 
When  for  so  soft  a  rod  dear  play  he  try? 
And  yet  my  Star,  because  a  sugar "d  kiss 
In  sport  I  suck'd,  while  she  asleep  did  lie, 

10  Doth  lour,  nay  chide,  nay  threat,  for  only  this. 

Sweet,  it  was  saucy  Love,  not  humble  I. 
But  no  'scuse  serves ;  she  makes  her  wrath  appear 
In  Beauty's  throne  —  see  now  who  dares  come  near 
Those  scarlet  judges,  threat'ning  bloody  pain? 

15  O  heav'nly  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face 

Anger  invests  with  such  a  lovely  grace, 
That  anger's  self  I  needs  must  kiss  again. 


I  never  drank  of  Aganippe  well, 
Nor  ever  did  in  shade  of  Tempe°  sit, 

20  And  Muses  scorn  with  vulgar  brains  to  dwell; 

Poor-layman,  I,  for  sacred  rites  unlit. 
Some  do  I  hear  of  Poet's  fury  tell. 
But  (God  wot)  wot  not  what' they  mean  by  it; 
And  this  I  swear  by  blackest  brook  of  hell, 

25  I  am  no  pick-i^urse  of  another's  wit. 

How  falls  it  then,  that  with  so  smooth  an  ease 
My  thoughts  I  speak,  and  what  I  speak  doth  flow 
In  verse,  and  that  my  verse  best  wits  doth  please  ? 
Guess  me  the  cause  —  what  is  it  thus?  —  fye,  no! 

30  Or  so?  —  much  less.     How  then ?  sure  thus  it  is, 

My  lips  are  sweet,  iuspir'd  with  Stella's  kiss. 


Of  all  the  kings  that  ever  here  did  reign, 
Edward,  named  Fourth,  as  first  in  praise  I  name. 
Not  for  his  fair  outside,  nor  well-lined  brain  — 
35  Although  less  gifts  imp°  feathers  oft  on  Fame. 

Nor  that  he  could,  young-wise,  wise-valiant,  frame 
His  sire's  revenge,  join'd  with  a  kingdom's  gain ; 
And,  gain'd  by  Mars  could  yet  mad  Mars  so  tame. 


SOME    SONNETS    OF    SIR    PHILIP    SYDNEY         263 


That  Balance  weigh'd  what  Sword  did  late  obtain. 
Nor  that  he  made  the  Floure-de-luce  so  'fraid, 
Though  strongly  hedged  of  bloody  Lions'  paws, 
That  witty  Lewis^  to  him  a  tribute  paid. 
Nor  this,  nor  that,  nor  any  such  small  cause  — 
But  only,  for  this  worthy  knight  durst  prove 
To  lose  his  crown  rather  than" fail  his  love. 


0  happy  Thames,  that  didst  my  Stella  bear, 

1  saw  thyself,  with  many  a  smiling  line 

Upon  thy  cheerful  face,  Joy's  livery  wear,  10 

"While  those  fair  planets  on  thy  streams  did  shine; 

The  boat  for  joy  could  not  to  dance  forbear. 

While  wanton  winds,  with  beauty  so  divine 

Ravish'd,  stay'd  not,  till  in  her  golden  hair 

They  did  themselves  (O  sweetest  pi'ison)  twine.  15 

And  fain  those  iEol's^  youth  there  would  their  stay 

Have  made  ;  but.  forced  by  nature  still  to  fly, 

First  did  with  puffing  kiss  those  locks  display. 

She,  so  dishevell'd,  blush'd  ;  fi-om  window  I 

With  sight  thereof  cried  out,  O  fair  disgrace,  20 

Let  Honour's  self  to  thee  grant  highest  place  ! 


Highway,  since  you  my  chief  Parnassus  be; 

And  that  my  Muse,  to  some  ears  not  unsweet. 

Tempers  her  words  to  trampling  horses'  feet. 

More  soft  than  to  a  chamber  melody  :  25 

Now  blessed  You  bear  onward  blessed  Me 

To  Her,  where  I  my  heart  safe  left  shall  meet, 

My  Muse  and  I  must  you  of  duty  greet 

With  thanks  and  wishes,  wishing  thankfully. 

Be  you  still  fair,  honour'd  by  public  heed,  30 

By  no  encroachment  wrong'd,  nor  time  forgot; 

Nor  blamed  for  blood,  nor  shamed  for  sinful  deed. 

And  that  you  know,  I  envy  you  no  lot 

Of  highest  wish,  I  wish  you  so  much  bliss, 

Hundreds  of  years  you  Stella's  feet  may  kiss.  35 

Of  the  foregoing,  tlie  first,  the  second,  and  the  last  sonnet, 
are  my  favourites.  But  the  general  beauty  of  them  all  is,  that 
they  are  so  perfectly  characteristical.     The  spirit  of  "  learning 


264  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

and  of  chivalry,"  —  of  which  union,  Spenser  has  entitled 
Sydney  to  have  been  the  "president,"  —  shines  through  them. 
I  confess  I  can  see  nothing  of  the  "jejune"  or  "frigid  "  in 
them  ;  much  less  of  the  "  stitf  "  and  "cumbrous  " — which  I  have 
5  sometimes  heard  objected  to  the  Arcadia.  The  verse  runs  off 
swiftly  and  gallantly.  It  might  have  been  tuned  to  the 
trumpet ;  or  tempered  (as  himself  expresses  it)  to  "  trampling 
horses'  feet."     They  abound  in  felicitous  phrases  — 

O  heav'uly  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face  — 

^th  Sonnet. 

2Q  Sweet  pillows,  sweetest  bed ; 

A  chamber  deaf  to  uoise,  and  blind  to  light; 
A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 

2d  Sonnet. 

That  sweet  enemy,  —  France  — 

oth  Son)iet. 

But  they  are  not  rich  in  words  only,  in  vague  and  unlocalised 

15  feelings  —  the  failing  too  much  of  some  poetry  of   the  present    • 
day — they   are  full,  material,   and    circumstantiated.      Time    i 
and  place  appropriates  every  one  of  them.     It  is  not  a  fever  of 
passion  wasting  itself  upon  a  thin  diet  of  dainty  words,  but  a 
transcendent  passion  pervading  and  illuminating   action,  pur- 

20  suits,  studies,  feats  of  arms,  the    opinions  of  contemporaries, 
and  his  judgment  of  them.     An  historical  thread  runs  through 
them,  which  almost  affixes  a  date  to  them  ;  marks  the  ichen  and    ' 
ivhere  they  were  written. 

I  have  dwelt  the  longer  upon  what  I  conceive  the  merit  of    ; 

25  these  poems,  because  I  have  been  hurt  by  the  wantonness  (I  wish 
I  could  treat  it  by  a  gentler  name)  with  which  W.  R.°  takes    ] 
every  occasion  of  insulting  the  memory  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney.    ' 
But  the  decisions  of  the  Author  of  Table  Talk,  etc.  (most  pro- 
found and  subtle  where  they  are,  as  for  the  most  part,  just), 

SO  are  more  safely  to  be  relied  upon,  on  subjects  and  authors  he 
has  a  partiality  for,  than  on  such  as  he  has  conceived  an  ac- 
cidental prejudice  against.  Milton  wrote  sonnets,  and  was  a 
king-hater  ;  and  it  was  congenial  perhaps  to  sacrifice  a  courtier 
to  a  ])atriot.     But  I  was  unwilling  to  lose  a  Jine  idea  from  my 

35  mind.     The  noble  images,  passions,  sentiments,  and  poetical 


SOME    SONNETS    OF    SIE    PHILIP    SYDNEY       265 

delicacies  of  character,  scattered  all  over  the  Arcadia  (spite  of 
some  stiffness  and  encumberment),  justify  to  me  the  character 
which  his  contemjjoraries  have  left  iis  of  the  writer.  I  cannot 
think  with  the  Critic,  that  Sir  Philip  Sydney  was  that  oppro- 
brious thing  ^hich.  b,  foolish  nobleman  in  his  insolent  hostility  5 
chose  to  term  him.  I  call  to  mind  the  epitaph  made  on  him,° 
to  guide  me  to  juster  thoughts  of  him ;  and  I  repose  upon  the 
beautiful  lines  in  the  ^'  Friend's  Passion  for  his  Astrophel," 
printed  with  the  Elegies  of  Spenser  and  others. 

You  knew  — who  knew  not  Astrophel?  10 

(That  I  should  live  to  say  I  knew, 
And  have  not  in  possession  still  I )  — 
Things  knov/n  permit  me  to  renew  — 

Of  him  you  know  his  merit  such, 

I  cannot  say  —  you  hear  —  too  much.  15 

Within  these  woods  of  Arcady 

He  chief  delight  and  pleasure  took  ; 

And  on  the  mountain  Partheny, 

Upon  the  crystal  liquid  brook. 
The  Muses  met  him  every  day,  20 

That  taught  him  sing,  to  write,  and  say. 

When  he  descended  down  the  mount, 

His  personage  seemed  most  divine  : 

A  thousand  graces  one  might  count 

Upon  his  lovely  cheerful  eyne.  25 

To  hear  him  speak,  and  sweetly  smile, 

You  were  in  Paradise  the  while. 

A  sweet  attractive  kind  of  grace; 

A  full  assurance  given  by  looks°; 

Continual  comfort  in  a  face,  30 

The  lineaments  of  Gospel  books  — 
I  trow  that  count'nance  cannot  lye 
Whose  thoughts  are  legi1)le  in  the  eye 


Above  all  others  tin's  is  he, 
AV'hich  erst  ajiprovcd  in  Iiis  song, 
That  love  and  lioiioiir  niiglit  agree. 
And  that  pure  love  will  do  no  wrong. 


266  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

Sweet  saiuts,  it  is  no  siu  or  blame 
To  love  a  mau  of  virtuous  name. 

Did  never  Love  so  sweetly  breathe 
In  any  mortal  breast  before ; 
g  Did  never  Muse  inspire  beneath 

A  Poet's  brain  with  tiner  store  ! 
He  wrote  of  Love  witli  high  conceit, 
And  Beauty  rear'd  above  her  height. 

Or  let  any  one  read  the  deeper  sorrows  (grief  running  into 
10  rage)  in  the  Poem,  —  the  last  in  the  collection  accompanying 
the  above,  —  whicli  from  internal  testimony  I  believe  to  be 
Lord  Brooke's  —  beginning  with  "  Silence  augmenteth  grief," 
and  then  seriously  ask  himself,  whether  the  subjects  of  such 
absorbing  and  confounding  regrets  could  have  been  that  thiyig 
15  w^hich  Lord  Oxford  termed  him. 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO  \ 

Dan  Stuart  once  told  us,  that  he  did  not  remember  that  he 
ever  deliberately  walked  into  the  Exhibition  at  Somerset  House 
in  his  life.  He  miglit  occasionally  have  escorted  a  party  of 
ladies  across  the  way  that  were  going  in;  but  he  never  went  in 

20  of  his  own  head.  Yet  the  office  of  the'Morning  Post  newspaper 
stood  then  just  where  it  does  now  —  we  are  carrying  you  back. 
Reader,  some  thirty  years  or  more  —  with  its  gilt-globe-topt 
front  facing  that  emporium  of  our  artists'  grand  Annual  Ex- 
positre.     We  sometimes  wish  that  we  had  observed  the  same 

25  abstinence  with  Daniel. 

A  word  or  two  of  D.  S.  He  ever  appeared  to  us  one  of  the 
finest-tempered  of  Editors.  Perry,  of  the  Morning  Chronicle, 
was  equally  pleasant,  wdth  a  dash,  no  shght  one  either,  of  the 
courtier.     S.  was  frank,  plain,  and  English  all  over.     We  have 

30  worked  for  both  these  gentlemen. 

It  is  soothing  to  contemplate  the  head  of  the  Ganges ;  to 
trace  the  first  little  bubblings  of  a  mighty  river, 


t 


NEWSPAPERS    THIRTY-FIVE    YEARS    AGO        267 

With  holy  reverence  to  approach  the  rocks, 
Whence  glide  the  streams  renowned  in  ancient  song. 

Fired  with  a  perusal  of  the  Abyssinian  Pilgrim's  exploratory 
ramblings  after  the  cradle  of  the  infant  Xilus,  we  well  remember 
on  one  fine  summer  holyday  (a  "  whole  day's  leave  "  we  called  it  5 
at  Christ's  Hospital)  sallying  forth  at  rise  of  sun,  not  very  well 
provisioned  either  for  such  an  undertaking,  to  trace  the  current 
of  the  Xew  River  —  Middletonian  stream!  —  to  its  scaturient° 
source,  as  we  had  read,  in  meadows  by  fair  Amwell.     Gallantly 
did  we  commence  our  solitary  quest  —  for  it  was  essential  to  10 
the  dignity  of  a  Discovery,  that  no  eye  of  schoolboy,  save  our 
own,  should  beam  on  the  detection.     By  flowery  spots,  and  ver- 
dant lanes  skirting    Hornsey,  Hope  trained  us  on  in  many  a 
baffling   turn;    endless,  hopeless    meanders,  as   it   seemed;    or 
as  if  the  jealous  waters  had  dodged  us,  reluctant  to  have  the  15 
humble  spot   of   their  nativity  revealed;  till   spent,  and  nigh 
famished,  before  set  of  the  same  sun,  we  sate  down  somewhere 
by  Bowes  Farm  near  Tottenham,  with  a  tithe  of  our  proposed 
labours  only  yet.  accomplished  ;   sorely  convinced  in  spirit,  that 
that  Brucian  enterprise  was  as  yet  too  arduous  for  our  young  20 
shoulders. 

Not  more  refreshing  to  the  thirsty  curiosity  of  the  traveller 
is  the  tracing  of  some  mighty  waters  up  to  their  shallow  font- 
let,  than  it  is  to  a  pleased  and  candid  reader  to  go  back  to  the 
inexperienced  essays,  the  first  callow  flights  in  authorship,  of  25 
some  established  name  in  literature  ;  from  the  Gnat°  which 
pre.luded  to  the  ^neid,  to  the  Duck°  which  Samuel  Johnson 
trod  on. 

Tn  those  days,  every  ^lorning  Paper,  as  an  essential  retainer 
to  its  establishment,  kept  an  author,  wdio  was  bound  to  furnish  30 
daily  a  quantum  of  witty  paragraphs.  Sixpence  a  joke  —  and 
it  was  thought  pretty  high  too  —  was  Dan  Stuart's  settled  re- 
muneration in  these  cases.  The  chat  of  the  day  —  scandal,  but, 
above  all,  dj^ess  —  furnished  the  material.  The  length  of  no 
paragraph  was  to  exceed  seven  lines.  Shorter  they  might  be,  35 
but  they  must  be  poignant. 

A  fashion  oi^fiesh,  or  rather  ;>/;?Z--coloured  hose  for  the  ladies, 
luckily  coming  up  at  the  juncture  when  we  were  on  our  probation 


268  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

for  the  place  of  Chief  Jester  to  S.'s  Paper,  established  our  repu- 
tation in  that  line.  We  were  pronounced  a  "  capital  hand."  O 
the  conceits  which  we  varied  upon  red  in  all  its  prismatic  dif- 
ferences !  from  the  trite  and  obvious  flower  of  Cytherea,°  to  the 
5  flaming  costume  of  the  lady  that  has  her  sitting  upon  '•  many 
waters."  Then  there  was  the  collateral  topic  of  ankles.  What 
an  occasion  to  a  truly  chaste  writer,  like  ourseif,  of  touching 
that  nice  brink,  and  yet  never  tumbling  over  it,  of  a  seemingly 
ever  approximating  something  "  not  quite  proper ;  "  while,  like 

10  a  skilful  posture-master,  balancing  betwixt  decorums  and  their 
opposites,  he  keeps  the  line,  from  which  a  hair's-breadth  devia- 
tion is  destruction ;  hovering  in  the  confines  of  light  and  dark- 
ness, or  where  "  both  seem  either ;  "  a  hazy  uncertain  delicacy ; 
Autolycus-like  in  the  Play,  still  putting  off  his  expectant  audi- 

15  tory  with  '•  Whoop,  do  nie  no  harm,  good  man  !  "  But  above 
all.  that  conceit  arrided  us  most  at  that  time,  and  still  tickles 
our  midriff  to  remember,  where,  allusively  to  the  flight  of 
Astraea° — ultima  Coelestum  terras  reliquii°  —  we  f>ronounced  — 
in  reference   to   the    stockings  still  —  that   Modesty   taking 

20  HER  FIXAL  LEAVE  OF  MORTALS,  HER  LAST  BlUSH  WAS  VISIBLE 
IX  HER  ASCEXT  TO  THE  HeAVEXS  BY  THE  TRACT  OF  THE  GLOW- 

ixG  ixsTEP.     This  might  be  called  the  crowning  conceit :  and 
was  esteemed  tolerable  writing  in  those  days. 

But  the  fashion  of  jokes,  with  all  other  things,  passes  away ; 

25  as  did  the  transient  mode  which  had  so  favoured  us.  The 
ankles  of  our  fair  friends  in  a  few  weeks  began  to  re  assume 
their  whiteness,  and  left  us  scarce  a  leg  to  stand  upon.  Other 
female  whims  followed,  but  none,  me  thought,  so  pregnant,  so 
invitatory  of  shrewd  conceits,  and  more  than  single  meanings. 

30  Somebody  has  said,  that  to  swallow  six  cross-buns  daily  con- 
secutively for  a  fortnight,  would  surfeit  the  stoutest  digestion. 
But  to  have  to  furnish  as  many  jokes  daily,  and  that  not  for  a 
fortnight,  but  for  a  long  twelvemonth,  as  we  were  constrained 
to  do,  was  a  little  harder  exaction.     '•  Man  goeth  forth  to  his 

35  work  until  the  evening" — from  a  reasonable  hour  in  the  morn- 
ing, we  presume  it  was  meant.  Xow,  as  our  main  occupation 
took  us  up  from  eight  till  five  every  dav  in  the  City ;  and  as 
our  evening  hours,  at  that  time  of  life,  had  generallv  to  do  with 
anything  rather  than  business,  it  follows,  that  the  only  time  we 


NEWSPAFIJBS    THIRTY-FIVE    YEARS    AGO         269 

could  spare  for  this  manufactory  of  jokes  —  our  supplementary 
livelihood,  that  supplied  us  in  every  want  beyond  mere  bread 
and  cheese  —  was  exactly  that  part  of  the  day  which  (as  we 
have  heard  of  No  Man's  Land)  may  be  fitly  denominated  ISTo 
Man's  Time  ;  that  is,  no  time  in  which  a  man  ought  to  be  up,  5 
and  awake,  in.  To  speak  more  ^Dlainly,  it  is  that  time,  of  an 
hour,  or  an  hour  and  a  half's  duration,  in  which  a  man,  whose 
occasions  call  him  up  so  preposterously,  has  to  wait  for  his 
breakfast. 

O  those  headaches  at  dawn  of  day,  when  at  five,  or  half-past  10 
five  in  summer,  and  not  much  later  in  the  dark  seasons,  we  were 
compelled  to  rise,  having  been  perhaps  not  above  four  hours  in 
bed  —  (for  w^e  were  no  go-to-beds  with  the  lamb,  though  we 
anticipated  the  lark  ofttimes  in  her  rising  —  we  like  a  parting 
cup  at  midnight,  as  all  young  men  did  before  these  effeminate  15 
times,  and  to  have  our  friends  about  us  —  we  were  not  constel- 
lated under  Aquarius  that  watery  sign,  and  therefore  incapable 
of    Bacchus,°  cold,  washy,  bloodless  —  w^e  were  none  of   your 
Basilian  watersponges,  nor  had  taken    our  degrees  at  Mount 
Ague  —  we  were  right   toiDing  Capulets,  jolly  companions,  we  20 
and  they)  —  but  to  have  to  get  up,  as  we  said  before,  curtailed 
of  half  our  fair  sleep,  fasting,  with  only  a  dim  vista  of  refresh- 
ing Bohea  in  the  distance  —  to  be  necessitated  to  rouse  ourselves 
at  the  detestable  rap  of  an  old  hag  of  a  domestic,  who  seemed 
to  take  a  diabolical  pleasure  in  her  announcement  that  it  was  25 
"  time   to   rise ;  "  and  whose  chappy  knuckles  we  have   often 
yearned   to   amputate,   and  string  them  up   at   our   chamber 
door,  to  be  a  terror  to  all  such  miseasonable  rest-breakers  in 
future  — 

"  Facil "  and  sweet,  as  Yirgil  sings,  had  been  the  "  descend-  30 
ing"of  the  over-night,  balmy  the  first  sinking  of  the  heavy 
head  upon  the  pillow ;  but  to  get  up,  as  he  goes  on  to  say, 

—  revocare  gradus,  superasque  evadere  ad  auras°  — 

and  to  get  up  moreover  to  make  jokes  with  malice  prepended 
—  there  was  the  "labour,"  there  the  "  work."  35 

No  Egyptian  taskmaster  ever  devised  a  slavery  like  to  that, 
our  slavery.     No  fractioiLS  operants  ever  turned  out  for  half  the 


270  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

tyranny  which  this  necessity  exercised  upon  us.  Half  a  dozen 
jests  in  a  day  (bating  Sundays  too),  why,  it  seems  nothing! 
We  make  twice  the  number  every  day  in  our  lives  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  claim  no  Sabbatical  exemptions.     But  then  they 

5  come  into  our  head.  But  when  the  head  has  to  go  out  to  them 
—  when  the  mountain  must  go  to  Mahomet  — 

Header,  try  it  for  once,  only  for  one  short  twelvemonth. 
It  was  not  every  week  that  a  fashion  of  pink  stockings  came 
up;  but  mostly,  instead  of  it,  some  rugged  uutractable  subject; 

10  some  topic  impossible  to  be  contorted  into  the  risible ;  some 
feature,  upon  which  no  smile  could  play ;  some  flint,  from  which 
no  process  of  ingenuity  could  procure  a  scintillation.  There 
they  lay;  there  your  appointed  tale°  of  brick-making  was  set 
before  you,  which  you  must  finish,  with  or  without  straw,  as  it 

15  happened.  The  craving  dragon  —  the  Public  —  like  him  in  Bel's 
Temple  —  must  be  fed,  it  expected  its  daily  rations ;  and  Daniel, 
and  ourselves,  to  do  us  justice,  did  the  best  we  could  on  this 
side  bursting  him. 

While  we  were  wringing  out  coy  sprightlinesses  for  the  Post, 

20iind  writhing  under  the  toil  of  what  is  called '•  easy  writing," 
Bob  Allen,°  our  (juondam  schoolfellow,  was  tapping  his  imprac- 
ticable brains  in  a  like  service  for  the  Oracle.  Not  that  Robert 
troubled  himself  much  about  wit.  If  his  paragraphs  had  a 
sprightlj^  air  about  them,  it  was  sufficient.  He  carried  this  non- 
20  chalance  so  far  at  last,  that  a  matter  of  intelligence,  and  that 
no  very  important  one,  was  not  seldom  palmed  upon  his  em- 
ployers for  a  good  jest ;  for  example  sake  —  "  Walking  yesterday 
morning  casually  down  Snow  Hill,  iclio  should  we  meet  hut  Mr. 
Deputy   Humphreys!  ice    rejoice   to  add,  that  the  worthy  Deputy 

30  appeared  to  enjoy  a  good  state  of  health.  We  do  not  remember  ecer 
to  have  seen  him  look  better.''  This  gentleman  so  surprisingly 
met  upon  Snow  Hill,  from  some  peculiarities  in  gait  or  gesture, 
was  a  constant  butt  for  mirth  to  the  small  paragraph-mongers 
of  the  day  ;  and  our  friend  thought  that  he  might  have  his  fling 

35  at  him  with  the  rest.  We  met  A.  in  Holborn'^shortly  after  this 
extraordinary  rencounter,  which  he  told  with  tears  of  satisfaction 
in  his  eyes,  and  chuckling  at  the  anticipated  effects  of  its  an- 
nouncement next  day  in  the  paper.  We  did  not  quite  compre- 
hend where  the  wit  of  it  lay  at  the  time ;  nor  was  it  easy  to  be 


XEWSPAPERS    THIRTY-FIVE    YEARS    AGO        271 

detected,  when  the  thing  came  out  advantaged  by  type  and 
letterpress.  He  had  better  have  met  anything  that  morning 
than  a  Common  Council  Man.  His  services  were  shortly  after 
dispensed  with,  on  the  plea  that  his  paragraphs  of  late  had  been 
deficient  in  point.  The  one  in  question,  it  must  be  owned,  had  5 
an  air,  in  the  opening  especially,  proper  to  awaken  curiosity  ; 
and  the  sentiment,  or  moral,  wears  the  aspect  of  humanity  and 
good  neighbourly  feeling.  But  somehow  the  conchision  was 
not  judged  altogether  to  answer  to  the  magnificent  promise  of 
the  premises.  We  traced  our  friend's  pen  afterwards  in  the  10 
True  Briton,  the  Star,  the  Traveller, — from  all  which  he  was 
successively  dismissed,  the  Proprietors  having  "  no  further  occa- 
sion for  his  services."  Xothing  was  easier  than  to  detect  him. 
When  wit  failed,  or  topics  ran  low,  there  constantly  appeared 
the  following  —  "  It  is  not  generally  known  that  the  three  Blue  Balls  15 
at  the  Pawnhrokers^  shops  are  the  ancient  arms  of  Lombardy.  The 
Lombards  ivere  the  first  money-brokers  in  Europe."  Bob  has  done 
more  to  set  the  public  right  on  this  important  point  of  blazonry, 
than  the  whole  College  of  Heralds. 

The  appointment  of  a  regular  wit  has  long  ceased  to  be  a  pai't  20 
of  the  economy  of  a  Morning  Paper.     Editors  find  their  own 
jokes,  or  do  as  well  without  them.     Parson  Este,  and  Topham, 
brought  up  the  set  custom  of  "  witty  paragraphs  "  first  in  the 
World.     Boaden  was  a  reigning  paragraphist  in  his  day,  and 
succeeded  poor  Allen  in  the  Oracle.     But,  as  we  said,  the  fashion  25 
of  jokes  passes  away ;  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  discover  in  the 
Biographer  of   Mrs.  Siddons,  any  traces  of   that  vivacity  and 
fancy  which  charmed  the  whole  town  at  the  cominencenjent  of 
the  present  century.     Even  the  prelusive  delicacies  of  the  pres- 
ent writer  —  the  curt  "  Astrasan  allusion"  —  would  be  thought 30 
pedantic  and  out  of  date,  in  these  days. 

From  the  office  of  the  Morning  Post  (for  w^e  may  as  w^ell  ex- 
haust our  Newspaper  Reminiscences  at  once)  by  change  of  prop- 
erty in  the  paper,  w^e  were  transferred,  mortifying  exchange ! 
to  the  office  of  the  Albion  Newspaper,  late  Kackstrow's  Mu-35 
seum,  in  Fleet-street.  What  a  transition  —  from  a  handsome 
apartment,  from  rosewood  desks  and  silver  inkstands,  to  an 
office  —  no  office,  but  a  den  rather,  but  just  redeemed  from  the 
occupation  of  dead   monsters,  of  which  it  seemed  redolent  — 


272  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

from  the  centre  of  loyalty  and  fashion,  to  a  focus  of  vulgarity 
and  sedition  !  Here  in  murky  closet,  inadequate  from  its  square 
contents  to  the  receipt  of  the  t^vo  bodies  of  Editor  and  humble 
paragraph-maker,  together  at  one  time,  sat  in  the  discharge  of 
5  his  new  Editorial  functions  (the  "Bigod"  of  Elia)  the  re- 
doubted John  Fen  wick. 

F.,  without  a  guinea  in  his  pocket,  and  having  left  not  many 
in  the  pockets  of  his  friends  whom  he  might  command,  had 
purchased  (on  tick,  doubtless)  the  whole  and  sole  Editorship, 

10  Proprietorship,  with  all  the  rights  and  titles  (such  as  they  were 
worth)  of  the  Albion  from  one  Lovell ;  of  whom  we  know 
nothing,  save  that  he  had  stood  in  the  pillory  for  a  libel  on 
the  Prince  of  Wales.  With  this  hopeless  concern  —  for  it  had 
been  sinking  ever   since   its   commencement,   and   could  now 

15  reckon  upon  not  more  than  a  hundred  subscribers  —  F.  reso- 
lutely determined  upon  pulling  down  the  Government  in  the 
first  instance,  and  making  both  our  fortunes  by  way  of  corollary. 
For  seven  weeks  and  more  did  this  infatuated  Democrat  go 
about  borrowing  seven-shilling  pieces,  and  lesser  coin,  to  meet 

20  the  daily  demands  of  the  Stamp  Office,  which  allowed  no  credit 
to  publications  of  that  side  in  politics.  An  outcast  from  politer 
bread,  we  attached  our  small  talents  to  the  forlorn  fortunes  of 
our  friend.     Our  occupation  now  was  to  write  treason. 

Recollections  of  feelings  —  which  were  all  that  now  remained 

25  from  our  first  boyish  heats  kindled  by  the  French  Revolution, 
when  if  we  were  misled,  we  erred  in  the  company  of  some  who 
are  accounted  very  good  men  now — rather  than  any  tendency 
at  this  time  to  Republican  doctrines  —  assisted  us  in  assuming 
a  style  of  writing,  while  the  paper  lasted,  consonant  in  no  very 

30  under  tone  to  the  right  earnest  fanaticism  of  F.  Our  cue  was 
now  to  insinuate,  rather  than  recommend,  possible  abdications. 
Blocks,  axes,  Whitehall  tribunals,  were  covered  with  flowers  of 
so  cunning  a  periphrasis^ as  Mr.  Bayes  says,  never  naming 
the  thing  directly  —  that  the  keen  eye  of  an  Attorney-General 

35  was  insufficient  to  detect  the  lurking  snake  among  them. 
There  were  times,  indeed,  when  we  sighed  for  onr  more  gentle- 
man-like occupation  under  Stuart.  But  with  change  of  mas- 
ters it  is  ever  change  of  service.  Already  one  paragraph,  and 
another,  as  we  learned  afterwards  from*^  a  gentleman  at  the 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IN  MODERN  ART     273 

i  Treasury,  had  begun  to  be  marked  at  that  office,  with  a  view 
'  of  its  being  submitted  at  least  to  the  attention  of  the  proper 
1  Law  Officers— when  an  unlucky,  or  rather  lucky  epigram  from 

our  pen,  aimed  at  Sir  J s  M h,  who  was  on  the  eve  of 

de^Darting  for  India  to  reap  the  fruits  of  his  apostasy,  as  F.  pro-  5 
nounced  it  (it  is  hardly  worth  particularizing),  happening  to 
oft'end  the  nice  sense  of  Lord,  (or,  as  he  then  delighted  to  be 
called.  Citizen  Stanhope),  deprived  F.  at  once  of  the  last  hopes 
of  a  guinea  from  the  last  patron  that  had  stuck  by  us ;  and 
breaking  up  our  establishment,  left  us  to  the  safe,  but  some- 10 
what  mortifying,  neglect  of  the  Crown  Lawyers.  —  It  was 
about  this  time,  or  a  little  earlier,  that  Dan  Stuart  made  that 
curious  confession  to  us,  that  he  had  "  never  deliberately 
walked  into  an  Exhibition  at  Somerset  House  in  his  life." 


BARRENNESS  OF   THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IN 
THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART 

Hogarth  excepted,  can  we  produce  any  one  painter  within  15 
the  last  fifty  years,  or  since  the  humour  of  exhibiting  began, 
that  has  treated  a  story  imaginatively  ?     By  this  Ave  mean,  upon 
whom  his  subject  has  so  acted,  that  it  has  seemed  to  direct 
him — not  to  be  arranged  by  him?     Any  upon  whom  its  lead- 
ing or  collateral  points  have  impressed  themselves  so  tyranni-20 
cally,  that  he  dared  not  treat  it  otherwise,  lest  he  should  falsify 
a  revelation?     Any  that  has  imparted  to  his  compositions,  not 
merely  so  much   truth    as  is  enough  to  convey  a  story  with 
3learness,  but  that  individualizing  property,  which  should  keej) 
the  subject  so  treated  distinct  in  feature  from  every  other  sul)-  l'5 
ject,  however  similar,  and   to  common  apprehensions  almost 
identical;  so  that  we  might  say,  this  and  this  part  could  have 
found  an  appropriate  place  iri^  no  other  picture  in  the  world 
Dut  this?     Is  there  anything  in  modern  art  —  we  will  not  de- 
mand that  it  should  be  equal  —  but  in  any  way  analogous  to.'X' 
jvhat  Titian"  has  effected,  in  that  wonderful  bringing  together 
)f  two  times  in  the  "  Ariadne,°"  in  the  Natioiuil  Gallery  ?     Tre- 

T 


274  THE   ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

cipitoiis,  Avitli  his  reeling  satyr  rout  about  liiui,  repeopling  and 
re-illuming  suddenly  the  waste  places,  drunk  with  a  new  fury 
beyond  the  grape,  Bacchus,  born  in  fire,  fire-like  flings  himself 
at  the  Cretan.  This  is  the  time  present.  With  this  telling  of 
5  the  story,  an  artist,  and  no  ordinary  one,  might  remain  richly 
proud.  Guido,°  in  his  harmonious  version  of  it,  saw  no  farther 
But  from  the  depths  of  the  imaginative  spirit  Titian  has  re 
called  past  time,  and  laid  it  contributory  with  the  present  to 
one  simultaneous  effect.     With  the  desert  all  ringing  with  the 

10  mad  cymbals  of  his  followers,  made  lucid  with  the  presence 
and  new  offers  of  a  god,  —  as  if  unconscious  of  Bacchus,  or 
but  idly  casting  her  eyes  as  upon  some  unconcerning  pageant 
—  her  soul  undistracted  from  Theseus  —  Ariadne  is  still  pac 
ing  the  solitary  shore,  in  as  much  heart-silence,  and  in  almost 

15  the  same  local  solitude,  with  which  she  awoke  at  daybreak  to 
catch  the  forlorn  last  glances  of  the  sail  that  bore  away  the 
Athenian. 

Here  are  two  points  miraculously  co-uniting :  fierce  society, 
with  the  feeling  of  solitude  still  absolute  ;  noonday  revelations. 

20  with  the  accidents  of  the  dull  grey  dawn  unquenched  and  linger- 
ing ;  the  present  Bacchus,  with  tho, past  Ariadne;  two  stories,  witl: 
double  Time;  separate,  and  harmonizing.  Had  the  artist  madf 
the  woman  one  shade  less  indifferent  to  the  God ;  still  more 
had  she  expressed  a  rapture  at  his  advent,  where  would  hav( 

25  been  the  story  of  the  mighty  desolation  of  the  heart  previous 
merged  in  the  insipid  accident  of  a  flattering  offer  met  witl 
a  welcome  acceptance.  The  broken  heart  for  Theseus  wa 
not  likely  to  be  pieced  up  by  a  God. 

We  have  before  us  a  fine  rough    print,  from   a   picture  hi 

30  Raphael  in  the  Vatican.  It  is  the  Presentation  of  the  new 
born  Eve  to  Adam  by  the  Almighty.  A  fairer  mother  of  man 
kind  we  might  imagine,  and  a  goodlier  sire  perhaps  of  mei 
since  born.  But  these  are  matters  subordinate  to  the  con 
ception  of  the  situation,  displayed  in  this  extraordinary  product 

Sotion.  A  tolerable  modern  artist  would  have  been  satisfiec 
with  tempering  certain  raptures  of  connubial  anticipation,  witl 
a  suitable  acknowledgment  to  the  Giver  of  the  blessing,  in  th 
countenance  of  the  first  bridegroom:  something  like  th 
divided  attention  of  the  child  (Adam  was  here  a  child-man 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IN  MODERN  ART     275 

y  between  the  given  toy,  and  the  mother  who  had  just  blest  it 
I  with  the  bauble.  This  is  the  obvious,  the  first-sight  view,  the 
li  superficial.  An  artist  of  a  higher  grade,  considering  the  awful 
y  presence  they  were  in,  would  have  taken  care  to  subtract 
I  something  from  the  expression  of  the  more  human  passion,  5 
..iand  to  heighten  the  more  spiritual  one.  This  would  be  as 
oimuch  as  an  exhibition -goer,  from  the  opening  of  Somerset 
iplHouse  to  last  year's  show,  has  been  encouraged  to  look  for. 
.{ lit  is  obvious  to  hint  at  a  lower  expression  yet,  in  a  picture  that, 
)t  for  respects  of  drawing  and  colouring,  might  be  deemed  not  10 
]{  A'holly  inadmissible  within  these  art-fostering  walls,  in  which 
^\:the  raptures  should  be  as  ninety-nine,  the  gratitude  as  one,  or 
jt  perhaps  zero  !  By  neither  the  one  passion  nor  the  other  has 
(fl  Raphael  expounded  the  situation  of  Adam.  Singly  upon  his 
,5  brow  sits  the  absorbing  sense  of  wonder  at  the  created  miracle.  15 

The  moment  is  seized  by  the  intuitive  artist,  perhaps  not  self- 
^  conscious  of  his  art,  in  which  neither  of  the  conflicting 
js  amotions  —  a  moment  how  abstracted — have  had  time  to 
.p.  spring  up,  or  to  battle  for  indecorous  mastery.  —  We  have  seen 
til  a,  landscape  of  a  justly-admired  neoteric,  in  w^hich  he  aimed  at  20 
dj  delineating  a  fiction,  one  of   the    most   severely   beautiful   in 

,.5,  antiquity — the  gardens  of   the  Hesperides.      To  do  Mr. 

yf  justice,  he  had  painted  a  laudable  orchard,  with  fitting  seclu- 
[jidon,  and  a  veritable  dragon  (of  which  a  Polyj)heme  by  Poussin° 
[(lis  somehow  a  fac-simile  for  the  situation),  looking  over  into  25 
ji  iihe  world  shut  out  backwards,  so  that  none  but  a  "  still-climb- 
ing Hercules "  could  hope  to  catch  a  peep  at  the  admired 
l„rernary°  of  Recluses.  Xo  conventual  porter  could  keep  his 
,,f,  ieys  better  than  this  custos  with  the  "  lidless  eyes."  He  not 
jj  Dnly  sees  that  none  do  intrude  into  that  privacy,  but,  as  clear  30 
^j,  is  daylight,  that  none  but  Hercules  aut  Diaholus  by  any  man- 
,,j  aer  of  means  can.  So  far  all  is  well.  We  have  absolute  soli- 
g:ude  here  or  nowhere.  Ab  extra  the  damsels  are  snug  enough. 
•g,  But  here  the  artist's  courage  seems  to  have  failed  him.  He 
j(]  DSgan  to  pity  his  pretty  charge,  and,  to  comfort  the  irksome- ;i5 
j1),  less,  has  peopled  their  solitude  with  a  bevy  of  fair  attendants, 
tli,  Tiaids  of  lionour,  or  ladies  of  the  bed-chamber,  according  to 
J;he  approved  etiquette  at  a  court  of  the  nineteenth  century; 
'  Ijiving  to  the  whole  scene  the  air  of  aftte-ch'unpctre,  if  we  will 


276  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

but  excuse  the  absence  of  the  gentlemen.  This  is  well,  and 
Watteauish.°  But  what  is  become  of  the  solitary  mystery  — 
the 

Daughters  three, 
5  That  sing  aroiiud  the  golden  tree  ? 

This  is  not  the  way  in  which  Poussin  would  have  treated  this 
subject. 

The    paintings,    or     rather     the    stupendous    architectuTal 
designs,  of  a  modern  artist,  have  been  urged  as  objections  to 

10  the  theory  of  our  motto.  They  are  of  a  character,  we  confess, 
to  stagger  it.  His  towered  structures  are  of  the  highest  order 
of  the  material  sublime.  Whether  they  were  dreams,  or  trans- 
cripts of  some  elder  workmanship  —  Assyrian  ruins  old — ■ 
restored  by  this  mighty  artist,  they  satisfy  our  most  stretched 

15  and  craving  conceptions  of  the  glories  of  the  antique  world. 
It  is  a  pity  that  they  were  ever  peopled.  On  that  side,  the 
imagination  of  the  artist  halts,  and  appears  defective.  Let  us 
examine  the  point  of  the  story  in  the  '- Belshazzar's  Feast. °" 
We  will  introduce  it  by  an  apposite  anecdote. 

20  The  court  historians  of  the  day  record,  that  at  the  first 
dinner  given  by  the  late  King  (then  Prince  Regent)  at  the^ 
Pavilion,  the  following  characteristic  frolic  was  played  off. 
The  guests  were  select  and  admiring ;  the  banquet  profuse  and 
admirable;  the  lights  lustrous  and  oriental;  the  eye  was  per- 

2o  fectly  dazzled  with  the  display  of  plate,  among  wiiich  the 
great  gold  salt-cellar,  brought  from  the  regalia  in  the  Tower 
for  this  especial  purpose,  itself  a  tower !  stood  conspicuous  for 
its  magnitude.  And  now  the  Rev.  *  *  *  *,  the  then  admired 
court    Chaplain,  was    proceeding    with  the  grace,  when,  at 

30  signal  given,  the  lights  were  suddenly  overcast,  and  a  huge 
transparency  was  discovered,  in  which  glittered  in  gold 
letters  — 

"  Bkightox  —  Earthquake  —  Swallow-up- Alive  !  " 

Imagine  the  confusion  of  the  guests  ;  the  Georges  and  garters 

35  jewels,    bracelets,    moulted    upon    the    occasion !      The   fans 

dropped,  and  picked  up  the  next  morning  by  the  sly  court 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IN  MODERN  ART     277 

pages !  Mrs.  Fitz-what's-her-name  fainting,  and  the  Countess 
of  *  *  *  holding  the  smelling-bottle,  till  the  good-humoured 
Prince  caused  harmony  to  be  restored,  by  calling  in  fresh 
candles,  and  declaring  that  the  whole  was  nothing  but  a  panto- 
mime hoox,  got  up  by  the  ingenious  Mr.  Farley  of  Covent5 
Garden,  from  hints  which  his  Royal  Highness  himself  had  fur- 
nished !  Then  imagine  the  infinite  applause  that  followed,  the 
mutaai  rallyings,  the  declarations  that  "  they  were  not  much 
frightened,"  of  the  assembled  galaxy. 

The  point  of  time  in  the  picture  e:^actly  answers  to  the  K 
appearance  of  the  transparency  in  the  anecdote.  The  huddle, 
the  flutter,  the  bustle,  the  escape,  the  alarm,  and  the  mock 
alarm  ;  the  prettinesses  heightened  by  consternation  ;  the  cour- 
tier's fear  which  was  flattery,  and  the  lady's  which  was  affecta- 
tion ;  all  that  we  may  conceive  to  have  taken  place  in  a  mob  of  15 
Brighton  courtiers,  sympathizing  with  the  well-acted  surprise 
of  their  sovereign  ;  all  this,  and  no  more,  is  exhibited  by  the 
well-dressed  lords  and  ladies  in  the  Hall  of  Belus,  Just  this 
sort  of  consternation  we  have  seen  among  a  flock  of  disquieted 
wild  geese  at  the  report  only  of  a  gun  having  gone  off !  20 

But  is  this  vulgar  fright,  this  mere  animal  anxiety  for  the 
preservation  of  their  persons,  —  such  as  we  have  witnessed  at  a 
theatre,  when  a  slight  alarm  of  fire  has  been  given  —  an  ade- 
quate exponent  of  a  supernatural  terror?  the  way  in  which  the 
finger  of  God,  writing  judgments,  would  have  been  met  by  the  25 
withered  conscience?  There  is  a  human  fear,  and  a  divine 
fear.  The  one  is  disturbed,  restless,  and  bent  upon  escape ; 
the  other  is  bowed  down,  effortless,  passive,  When  the  spirit 
appeared  before  Elipliaz^  in  the  visions  of  the  night,  and  the 
hair  of  his  flesh  stood  up,  was  it  in  the  thoughts  of  the  Te-30 
manite  to  ring  the  bell  of  his  chamber,  or  to  call  up  the  servants? 
But  let  us  see  in  the  text  what  there  is  to  justify  all  this  huddle 
of  vulgar  consternation. 

From  the  words  of   Daniel  it  appears  that  Belshazzar  had 
made  a  great  feast  to  a  thousand  of  his  lords,  and  drank  wine  35 
before  the  thousand.   The  golden  and  silver  vessels  are  gorgeously 
enumerated,  with  the  princes,  the  king's  concubines,  and  his 
wives.     Then  follows  — 

"In  the  sarae  hour  came  forth  fingers  of  a  man's  han<l,  and 


278  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

wrote  over  against  the  candlestick  upon  the  plaster  of  the  Nvall 
of  the  king's  palace ;  and  the  I'ing  saw  the  part  of  the  hand  that 
wrote.  Then  the  king's  countenance  was  changed,  and  his 
thoughts  troubled  him,  so  that  the  joints  of  his  loins  were 
5  loosened,  and  his  knees  smote  one  against  another." 

This  is  the  plain  text.  By  no  hint  can  it  be  otherwise  in- 
ferred, but  that  the  appearance  was  solely  confined  to  the  fancy 
of  Belshazzar,  that  his  single  brain  was  troubled.  Not  a  word 
is  spoken  of  its  being  seen  by  any  else  there  present,  not  even 

10  by  the  queen  herself,  who  merely  undertakes  for  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  phenomenon,  as  related  to  her,  doubtless,  by  her 
husband.  The  lords  are  simply  said  to  be  astonished ;  i.e.  at 
the  trouble  and  the  change  of  countenance  in  their  sovereign. 
Even  the  prophet  does  not  appear  to  have  seen  the  scroll,  which 

15  the  king  saw.  He  recalls  it  only,  as  Joseph  did  the  Dream  to 
the  King  of  Egypt.  "  Then  was  the  part  of  the  hand  sent  from 
him  [the  Lord],  and  this  writing  was  written."  He  speaks  of 
the  phantasm  as  past. 

Then  what  becomes  of  this  needless  multiplication  of  the 

20  miracle?  this  message  to  a  royal  conscience,  singly  expressed  — 
for  it  was  said,  "Thy  kingdom  is  divided,"  —  simultaneously 
impressed  upon  the  fancies  of  a  thousand  courtiers,  who  were 
implied  in  it  neither  directly  nor  grammatically? 

But,  admitting  the  artist's  own  version  of  the  story,  and  that 

25  the  sight  was  seen  also  by  the  thousand  courtiers  —  let  it  have 
been  visible  to  all  Babylon  —  as  the  knees  of  Belshazzar  were 
shaken,  and  his  countenance  troubled,  even  so  would  the  knees 
of  every  man  in  Babylon,  and  their  countenances,  as  of  an 
individual  man,  been  troubled  ;    bowed,  bent  down,  so  would 

30  they  have  remained,  stupor-fixed,  with  no  thought  of  struggling 
with  that  inevitable  judgment. 

Xot  all  that  is  optically  possible  to  be  seen,  is  to  be  shown  in 
every  picture.  The  eye  "^delightedly  dwells  upon  the  brilliant 
individualities  in  a  "Marriage  at  Cana,"  by  Veronese,^  or  Titian, 

35  to  the  very  texture  and  colour  of  the  wedding  garments,  the 
ring  glittering  upon  the  bride's  finger,  the  metal  and  fashion  of 
the  wine-pots;  for  at  such  seasons  there  is  leisure  and  luxury 
to  be  curious.  But  in  a  "  day  of  judgment,"  or  in  a  "  day  of 
lesser  horrors,  yet  divine/'  as  at  the  "impious  feast  of  Belshazzar, 


THE  UIAGIXATIVE  FACULTY  IN  MODERN  ART      279 

the  eye  should  see,  as  the  actual  eye  of  an  agent  or  patient  in 
the  immediate  scene  would  see,  only  in  masses  and  indistinction. 
Not  only  the  female  attire  and  jewelry  exposed  to  the  critical 
eye  of  the  fashion,  as  minutely  as  the  dresses  in  a  lady's  maga- 
zine, in  the  criticised  picture,  —  but  perhaps  the  curiosities  of  5 
anatomical  science,  and  studied  diversities  of  posture  in  the 
falling  angels  and  sinners  of  Michael  Angelo,  —  have  no  busi- 
ness in  their  great  subjectSc     There  was  no  leisure  for  them. 

By  a  wise  falsification,  the  great  masters  of  painting  got  at 
their  true  conclusions ;  by  not  showing  the  actual  appearances,  10 
that  is,  all  that  was  to  be  seen  at  any  given  moment  by  an 
indifferent  eye,  but  only  w^hat  the  eye  might  be  supposed  to  see 
in  the  doing  or  suffering  of  some  portentous  action  =  Suppose 
the  moment  of  the  swallowing  up  of  Pompeii.  There  they 
were  to  be  seen — houses,  columns,  architectural  proportions,  15 
differences  of  public  and  private  buildings,  men  and  women  at 
their  standing  occupations,  the  diversified  thousand  postures, 
attitudes,  dresses,  in  some  confusion  truly,  but  physically  they 
were  visible.  But  what  eye  saw  them  at  that  eclipsing  moment, 
which  reduces  confusion  to  a  kind  of  unity,  and  when  the  senses  20 
are  upturned  from  their  proprieties,  when  sight  and  hearing 
are  a  feeling  only?  A  thousand  years  have  passed,  and  we  are 
at  leisure  to  contemplate  the  weaver  fixed  standing  at  his  shut- 
tle, the  baker  at  his  oven,  and  to  turn  over  with  antiquarian 
coolness  the  pots  and  pans  of  Pompeii.  23 

"  Sun,  stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeon,  and  thou.  Moon,  in  the 
valley  of  Ajalon."  Who,  in  reading  this  magnificent  Hebraism, 
in  his  conception,  sees  aught  but  the  heroic  son  of  Nun,  with 
the  outstretched  arm,  and  the  greater  and  lesser  light  obse- 
quious? Doubtless  there  were  to  be  seen  hill  and  dale,  and  30 
chariots  and  horsemen,  on  open  plain,  or  winding  by  secret 
defiles,  and  all  the  circumstances  and  stratagems  of  war.  But 
whose  eyes  would  have  been  conscious  of  this  array  at  the  inter- 
position of  the  synchronic  miracle?  Yet  in  the  picture  of  this 
subject  by  the  artist  of  the  Belshazzar's  Feast  —  no  ignoble  35 
work  either — the  nuirslialling  and  landscape  of  tlie  war  is 
everything,  the  miracle  sinks  into  an  anecdote  of  the  day;  and 
the  eye  may  "  dart  through  rank  and  file  traverse"  for  some 
minutes,  before  it  shall  discover,  among  his  armed  followers. 


280  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

which  is  Joshua!  Not  modern  art  alone,  but  ancient,  where 
only  it  is  to  be  found  if  anywhere,  can  be  detected  erring,  from 
defect  of  this  imaginative  faculty.  The  world  has  nothing  to 
show  of  the  preternatural  in  painting,  transcending  the  figure 
5  of  Lazarus  bursting  his  grave-clothes,  in  the  great  picture  at 
Angerstein's.  It  seems  a  thing  between  two  beings.  A  ghastly 
liorror  at  itself  struggles  with  newly-apprehending  gratitude 
at  second  life  bestowed.  It  cannot  forget  that  it  was  a  ghost. 
It  has  hardly  felt  that  it  is  a  body.    It  has  to  tell  of  the  world  of 

10  spirits.  —  Was  it  from  a  feeling,  that  the  crowd  of  half-impas- 
sioned bystanders,  and  the  still  more  irrelevant  herd  of  passers-by 
at  a  distance,  who  have  not  heard,  or  but  faintly  have  been  told 
of  the  passing  miracle,  admirable  as  they  are  in  design  and 
hue  —  for  it  is  a  glorified  work  —  do  not  respond  adequately  to 

lathe  action — that  the  single  figure  of  the  Lazarus  has  been 
attributed  to  Michael  Angelo,  and  the  mighty  Sebastian  un- 
fairly robbed  of  the  fame  of  the  greater  half  of  the  interest? 
Now  that  there  were  not  indifferent  passers-by  within  actual 
scope  of  the  eyes  of  those  present  at  the  miracle,  to  whom  tlie 

20  sound  of  it  had  but  faintly,  or  not  at  all,  reached,  it  would  be 
hardihood  to  deny;  but  would  they  see  them?  or  can  the  mind 
in  the  conception  of  it  admit  of  such  unconcerning  objects, — 
can  it  think  of  them  at  all?  or  what  associating  league  to  the 
imagination  can  there  be  between  the  seers  and  the  seers  not, 

25  of  a  presential  miracle  ? 

Were  an  artist  to  paint  upon  demand  a  picture  of  a  Dryad, 
we  will  ask  whether,  in  the  present  low  state  of  expectation,  the 
patron  would  not,  or  ought  not,  to  be  fully  satisfied  with  a 
beautiful  naked  figure  recumbent  under  wide-stretched  oaks  ? 

30  Disseat  those  woods,  and  place  the  same  figure  among  fountains, 
and  falls  of  pellucid  water,  and  you  have  a  —  Xaiad !  Not  so 
in  a  rough  print  we  have  seen  after  Julio  Romano,"  we  think  — 
for  it  is  long  since  —  there,  by  no  process,  with  mere  change  of 
scene,  could   the  figure   have  reciprocated  characters.     Long, 

35  grotesque,  fantastic,  yet  with  a  grace  of  her  own,  beautiful  in 
convolution  and  distortion,  linked  to  her  connatural  tree,  co- 
twisting  with  its  limbs  her  own,  till  both  seemed  either  — 
these,  animated  branches;  those,  disanimated  members— yet 
the  animal  and  vegetable  lives  sufficiently  kept  distinct  —his 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IN  MODERN  ART     281 

Dryad'^  lay  —  an  approximation  of  two  natures,  which  to  con- 
ceive, it  must  be  seen ;  analogous  to,  not  the  same  with,  the 
delicacies  of  Ovidian  transformations. ° 

To  the  lowest  subjects,  and,  to  a  superficial  comprehension, 
the  most  barren,  the  Great  Masters  gave  loftiness  and  fruitful- 5 
ness.     The  large  eye  of  genius  saw  in  the  meanness  of  present 
objects  their  capabilities  of  treatment  from  their  relations  to 
some  grand  Past  or  Future.     How  has  Raphael  —  ^\e  must  still 
linger  about  the  Vatican  —  treated  the  humble  craft  of  the  ship- 
builder, in  his  "  Building  of  the  Ark  "  ?     It  is  in  that  scriptural  10 
series,  to  which  we  have  referred,  and  which,  judging  from  some 
fine  rough  old  graphic  sketches  of  them  which  we  possess,  seem 
to  be  of  a  higher  and  more  poetic  grade  than  even  the  Cartoons. 
The  dim  of  sight  are  the  timid  and  the  shrinking.     There  is 
a   cowardice    in    modern    art.     As   the    Frenchman,  of  whom  15 
Coleridge's  friend  made  the  prophetic  guess  at  Kome,  from  the 
beard  and  horns  of  the  Moses  of  Michael  Angelo  collected  no 
inferences  beyond  that  of  a  He  Goat  and  a  Cornuto ;  so  frojn 
this  subject,  of  mere  mechanic  f)romise,  it  would  instinctively 
turn    away,   as    from    one    incapable    of   investiture  with    any  20 
grandeur.^  The  dockyards  at  Woolwich  would  object  derogatory 
associations.    The  depot  at  Chatham  would  be  the  mote  and  the 
beam  in  its  intellectual  eye.     But  not  to  the  nautical  prepara- 
tions in  the  ship-yards  of  Civita  Vecchia  did  Raphael  look  for 
instructions,  when  he  imagined  the  Building  of  the  Vessel  that  25 
was  to  be  conservatory  of  the  wa-ecks  of  the  species  of  drowned 
mankind.     In  the  intensity  of  the  action  he  keeps  ever  out  of 
sight  the  meanness  of  the  operation.    There  is  the  Patriarch,  in 
calm  forethought,  and  with  holy  prescience,  giving  directions. 
And  there  are  his  agents  —  the  solitary  but  suflicient  Three  — no 
hewing,  sawing,  every  one  with  the  might  and  earnestness  of 
a  Demiurgus^;    under  some  instinctive  rather   than    technical 
guidance;    giant-muscled;    every  one  a  Hercules;    or  liker  to 
those  Vulcanian  Three,  that  in  sounding  caverns  under  Mongi- 
bello  wrought  in  fire — Brontes,  and  black  Steropes,  and  Pyrac-35 
mon.     So  work  the  workmen  that  should  repair  a  world! 

Artists  again  err  in  the  confoiniding  of  jioetlc  with  pictorial 
mhjc.cts.  In  the  latter,  the  exterior  accidents  are  nearly  every- 
thing, the  unseen  qualities  as  nothing.     Othello's  colour  — the 


282  THE   ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

infirmities  and  corpulence  of  a  Sir  John  Falstaff  —  do  they 
haunt  us  perpetually  in  the  reading?  or  are  they  obtruded 
upon  our  conceptions  one  time  for  niuety-nine  that  we  are  lost 
in  admiration  at  the  respective  moral  or  intellectual  attributes 
5  of  the  character?  But  in  a  picture  Othello  is  always  a  Blacka- 
moor ;  and  the  other  only  Plump  Jack.  Deeply  corporealized, 
and  enchained  hopelessly  in  the  grovelling  fetters  of  externality, 
must  be  the  mind,  to  which,  in  its  better  moments,  the  image  of 
the  high-souled,  high-intelligenced  Quixote  —  the  errant°  Star 

10  of  Knighthood,  made  more  tender  by  eclipse  —  has  never  pre- 
sented itself,  divested  from  the  unhallowed  accompaniment  of  a 
Sancho.  or  a  rabblement  at  the  heels  of  Rosinante.  That  man 
has  read  his  book  by  halves;  he  has  laughed,  mistaking  his 
author's  purport,  which  was  —  tears.     The  artist  that  pictures 

15  Quixote  (and  it  is  in  this  degrading  point  that  he  is  every 
season  held  up  at  our  Exhibitions)  in  the  shallow  hope  of 
exciting  mirth,  would  have  joined  the  rabble  at  the  heels  of 
his  starved  steed.  We  wish  not  to  see  that  counterfeited, 
which  we  would  not  have  wished  to  see  in  the  reality.     Con- 

20  scions  of  the  heroic  inside  of  the  noble  Quixote,  who,  on  hear- 
ing tliat  his  withered  person  was  passing,  would  have  stepped 
over  his  threshold  to  gaze  upon  his  forlorn  habiliments,  and  the 
"  strange  bed-fellows  which  misery  brings  a  man  acquainted 
with"?     Shade  of  Cervantes!  who  in  thy  Second  Part  could 

25  put  into  the  mouth  of  thy  Quixote  those  high  aspirations  of  a 
super-chivalrous  gallantry,  where  he  replies  to  one  of  the  shep- 
herdesses, apprehensive  that  he  would  spoil  their  pretty  net- 
works, and  inviting  him  to  be  a  guest  with  them,  in  accents 
like   these:    "Truly,  fairest    Lady,  Actseon  was    not  more  as- 

30  tonished  when  he  saw  Diana  bathing  herself  at  the  fountain, 
than  I  have  been  in  beholding  your  beauty :  I  commend  the 
manner  of  your  pastime,  and  thank  yon  for  your  kind  offers; 
and,  if  I  may  serve  you,  so  I  may  be  sure  you  will  be  obeyed, 
you  may  command  me :  for  my  profession  is  this.  To  show  my- 

35  self  thankful,  and  a  doer  of  good  to  all  sorts  of  people,  especially 
of  the  rank  that  your  person  shows  you  to  be :  -and  if  those 
nets,  as  they  take  up  but  a  little  piece  of  ground,  should  take 
np  the  whole  world,  I  would  seek  out  new  worlds  to  pass 
through,  rather  than  break  them  :  and  (he  adds)  that  you  may 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IN  MODERN  ART     283 

give  credit  to  this  ray  exaggeration,  behold  at  least  lie  that 
proiniseth  you  this,  is  Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha,  if  haply 
this  name  hath  corae  to  your  hearing."  Illustrious  Eoniancer! 
were  the  "  fine  frenzies,"  which  possessed  the  brain  of  thy  owu 
Quixote,  a  fit  subject,  as  in  this  Second  Part,  to  be  exposed  to  5 
the  jeers  of  Duennas  and  Serving-men?  to  be  moustered,  and 
shown  up  at  the  heartless  banquets  of  great  men?  Was  that 
pitiable  infirmity,  which  in  tiiy  First  Part  misleads  him,  always 
from  li-ltliin,  into  iialf-ludicrous.  but  more  than  half-compassion- 
able  and  admirable  errors,  not  infliction  enough  from  heaven,  10 
that  men  by  studied  artifices  must  devise  and  practise  upon 
the  humour,  to  inflame  where  they  should  soothe  it?  ^Vhy, 
GoneriP  would  have  blushed  to  practise  upon  the  abdicated 
king  at  this  rate,  and  the  she-wolf  Regan°  not  have  endured 
to  play  the  pranks  upon  his  fled  wits,  which  thou  first  made  15 
thy  Quixote  suffer  in  Duchesses'  halls,  and  at  the  hands  of  that 
unworthy  nobleman. ^ 

In  the  First  Adventures,  even,  it  needed  all  the  art  of  the  most 
consummate  artist  in  the  Book  way  that  the  world  hath  yet 
seen,  to  keep  up  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  the  heroic  attributes  20 
of  the  character  without  relaxing;  so  as  absolutely  that  they 
shall  suffer  no  alloy  from  the  debasing  fellowship  of  the  clown. 
If  it  ever  obtrudes  itself  as  a  disharmony,  are  we  inclined  to 
laugh;  or  not,  rather,  to   indulge  a  contrary  emotion? — Cer- 
vantes, stung,  perchance,  by  the  relish  with  which  his  Reading  25 
Public  had  received  the  fooleries    of   the  man,  more  to  their 
palates  than  the  generosities  of  the  master,  in  the  sequel  let  his 
pen  run  riot,  lost  the  harmony  and  the  balance,  and  sacrificed 
a  great  idea  to  the  taste  of  his  contemporaries.     We  know  that 
in  the  present  day  the  Knight  has  fewer  admirers  than  the  .so 
Squire.     Anticipating,  what  did  actually  happen  to    him  —  as 
afterwards  it  did  to  his  scarce  inferior  follower,  the  Author  of 
"  Guzman  de  Alfarache  "  —  that  some  less  knowing  hand  would 
prevent  him  by  a  spurious  Second  Part;  and  judging  that  it 
would  be  easier  for  his  competitor  to  outbid  him  in  the  comi-35 
calities,   than  in  the  romance,  of  his  work,  he  abandoned  his 

1  Yet  from   his    Second    Part,   our  cried-up  pictures    are    mostly 
selected ;  the  waiting-women  with  beards,   etc. 


284  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

Knight,  and  has  fairly  set  up  the  Squire  for  his  Hero.  For 
what  else  has  he  unsealed  tlie  eyes  oi  Sancho ;  and  instead  of 
that  twilight  state  of  semi-insanity  —  the  madness  at  second- 
hand—  the  contagion,  caught  from  a  stronger  mind  infected  — 

5  that  war  between  native  cunning,  and  hereditary  deference, 
with  which  he  has  hitherto  accompanied  his  master — two  for 
a  pair  almost  —  does  he  substitute  a  downright  Knave,  with 
oj^en  eyes,  for  his  own  ends  only  following  a  confessed  Mad- 
man; and  offering  at  one  time  to  lay,  if  not  actually  laying, 

10  hands  upon  him  !  From  the  moment  that  Sancho  loses  his 
reverence,  Don  Quixote  is  become  —  a  treatable  lunatic.  Our 
artists  handle  him  accordingly. 


REJOICINGS  UPOX  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF 

AGE 

The  Old  Year  being  dead,  and  the  New  Year  coming  of  age, 
which  he  does,  by  Calendar  Law,  as  soon  as  the  breath  is  out 

15  of  the  old  gentleman's  bod}^  nothing  would  serve  the  young 
sj)ark  but  he  must  give  a  dinner  upon  the  occasion,  to  which  all 
the  Days  in  the  j'ear  were  invited.  The  Festivals,  whom  he 
deputed  as  his  stewards,  were  mightily  taken  with  the  notion. 
They  had  been  engaged  time  out  of  mind,  they  said,  in  pro- 

20  viding  mirth  and  good  cheer  for  mortals  below ;  and  it  was 
time  they  should  have  a  taste  of  their  own  bounty.  It  was 
stiffly  debated  among  them  whether  the  Fasts  should  be  ad- 
mitted. Some  said  tlie  appearance  of  such  lean,  starved  guests, 
with  their  mortified  faces,  would  pervert  the  ends  of  the  meet> 

L'oing.  But  the  objection  was  overruled  by  Christmas  Day,  who 
had  a  design  upon  .4.?/^  Wednesday  (as  you  shall  hear),  and  a 
mighty  desire  to  see  how  the  old  Domine  would  behave  himself 
in  his  cups.  Only  the  Vigils°  were  requested  to  come  with 
their  lanterns,  to  light  the  gentlefolks  home  at  night. 

30  All  the  Days  came  to  their  day.  Covers  were  provided  for 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  guests  at  the  principal  table  ;  with 
an  occasional  knife  and  fork  at  the  side-board  for  the  Twenty- 
Ninth  of  February. 


THE    NEW    YEAR'S    COMING    OF    AGE  285 

I  should  have  told  you,  that  cards  of  invitation  had  been 
issued.  The  carriers  were  the  Hours ;  twelve  little,  merry, 
whirligig  foot-pages,  as  you  should  desire  to  see,  that  went  all 
round,  and  found  out  the  persons  invited  well  enough,  with  the 
exception  of  Easter  Day,  Shrove  Tuesday,  and  a  few  such  Move-  5 
ables,  who  had  lately  shifted  their  quarters. 

Well,  they  all  met  at  last — foul  Days,  fine  Days,  all  sorts  of 
Days,  and  a  rare  din  they  made  of  it.  There  was  nothing  but, 
Hail !  fellow  Day,  well  met  —  brother  Day  —  sister  Day,  — 
only  Lady  Day°  kept  a  little  on  the  aloof,  and  seemed  somewhat  10 
scornful.  Yet  some  said  Twelfth  Day°  cut  her  out  and  out,  for 
she  came  in  a  tiffany  suit,  M'hite  and  gold,  like  a  queen  on  a 
frost-cake,  all  royal,  glittering,  and  E])iphanous.°  The  rest 
came,  some  in  green,  some  in  white  —  but  old  Lent  and  his 
family  were  not  yet  out  of  mourning.  Rainy  Days  came  in,  15 
dripping;  and  sunshiny  Days  helped  them  to  change  their 
stockings.  Wedding  Day  was  there  in  his  marriage  finery,  a 
little  the  worse  for  wear.  Pay  Day  came  late,  as  he  always 
does ;  and  Doomsday  sent  word  —  he  might  be  expected. 

April  Fool  (as  my  young  lord's  jester)  took  upon  himself  to  20 
marshal  the  guests,  and  wild  work  he  made  with  it.  It  would 
have  posed  old  Erra  Pater°  to  have  found  out  any  given  Day 
in  the  year  to  erect  a  scheme  upon  —  good  Days,  bad  Days, 
were  so  shuffled  together,  to  the  confounding  of  all  sober 
horoscopy.  25 

He  had  stuck  the  Twenty-First  of  June  next  to  the  Twenty- 
Second  of  December,  and  the  former  looked  like  a  Maypole  sid- 
ing a  marrow-bone.  Ash  Wednesday  got  wedged  in  (as  was 
concerted)  betwixt  Christmas  and  Lord  Mayor's  Days.  Lord ! 
how  he  laid  about  him!  Nothing  but  barons°  of  beef  and'io 
turkeys  would  go  dowm  with  him —  to  the  great  greasing  and 
detriment  of  his  new  sackcloth  bib  and  tucker.  And  still 
Christmas  Day  was  at  his  elbow,  plying  him  with  the  wassail- 
bowl,  till  he  roared,  and  hiccupp'd,  and  protested  there  was  no 
faith  in  dried  ling,"  but  commended  it  to  the  devil  for  a  sour,  35 
windy,  acrimonious,  censorious,  hy-po-crit-crit-critical  mess,  and 
no  dish  for  a  gentleman.  Then  he  dipt  his  fist  into  the  middle 
of  the  great  custard  that  stood  before  his  left-hand  neiyhhour,  and 
daubed  his  hungry  beard  all  over  with  it,  till  you  would  have 


286  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

taken    him   for    the   Last   Day    in   Decemher,   it    so    hung    in 
icicles. 

At  another  part  of  the  table,  Shrove  Tuesday  was  helping  the 
Second  of  September  to  some  cock  broth,  —  which  courtesy  the 
5  latter  returned  with  the  delicate  thigh  of  a  hen  pheasant — so 
that  there  was  no  love  lost  for  that  matter.  The  Last  of  Lent 
was  spunging°  upon  Shrove-tide's  pancakes;  which  April  Fool 
perceiving,  told  him  that  he  did  well,  for  pancakes  were  proper 
to  a  good  fry-day. 

10  In  another  part,  a  hubbub  arose  about  the  Thirtieth  of  Janu- 
ary, who,  it  seems,  being  a  sour,  puritanic  character,  that 
thought  nobody's  meat  good  or  sanctified  enough  for  him,  had 
smuggled  into  the  room  a  calf's  head,  which  he  had  had  cooked 
at  home  for  that   purpose,  thinking   to   feast   thereon    incon- 

lotinently;  but  as  it  lay  in  the  dish,  March  Many  weathers,  who 
is  a  ver}'  fine  lady,  and  subject  to  the  meagrims,°  screamed  out 
there  was  a  ''human  head  in  the  platter,"  and  raved  about 
Herodias'  daughter  to  that  degree,  tliat  the  obnoxious  viand 
was  obliged  to  be  removed  ;    nor  did  she  recover  her  stomach 

20  till  she  had  gulped  down  a  Resforatire,°  confected  of  Oak  Apple,"" 
which  the  merry  Ticenty-Ninthof  May  always  carries  about  with 
him  for  that  purpose. 

The  King's  health  i  being  called  for  after  this,  a  notable  dis- 
pute arose  between  the  Twelfth  of  August  (a  zealous  old  Whig 

25  gentlewoman)  and  the  Twenty-Third  of  April  (a  new-fangled 
lady  of  the  Tory  stamp)  as  to  which  of  them  should  have  the 
honour  to  propose  it.  A  ugust  grew  hot  upon  the  matter,  affirm- 
ing time  out  of  mind  the  prescriptive  right  to  have  lain  with 
her,  till  her  rival  had  basely  supplanted  her;  whom  she  repre- 

30  sented  as  little  better  than  a  kept  mistress,  who  went  about  in 
fne  clothes,  while  she  (the  legitimate  Birthday)  had  scarcely 
a  rag,  etc. 

Aprd  Fool,  being  made  mediator,  confirmed  the  right,  in  the 
strongest  form  of  words,  to  the  appellant,  but  decided  for  peace' 

35  sake,  that  the  exercise  of  it  should  remain  with  the  present 
possessor.  At  the  same  time,  he  slily  rounded  the  first  lady 
in  the  ear,  that  an  action  might  lie  against  the  Crown  for 
hi-geny. 

1  King  George  IV. 


THE    NEW    YEAR'S    COMING    OF   AGE  287 

Tt  beginning  to  grow  a  little  duskish,  Candlemas  lustily 
bawled  out  for  lights,  which  was  opposed  by  all  the  Days,  who 
protested  against  burning  daylight.  Then  fair  water  was 
handed  round  in  silver  ewers,  and  the  same  lady  was  observed 
to  take  an  unusual  time  in  Washing  herself.  5 

May  Day,  with  that  sweetness  which  is  peculiar  to  her,  in  a 
neat  speech  proposing  the  health  of  the  founder,  crowned  her 
goblet  (and  by  her  example  the  rest  of  the  company)  with 
garlands.  This  being  done,  the  lordly  New  Year,  from  the 
upper  end  of  the  table,  in  a  cordial  but  somewhat  lofty  tone,  10 
returned  thanks.  He  felt  proud  on  an  occasion  of  meeting  so 
many  of  his  worthy  father's  late  tenants,  promised  to  improve 
their  farms,  and  at  the  same  time  to  abate  (if  anything  was 
found  unreasonable)  in  their  rents. 

At  the  mention  of  this,  the  four  Quarter  Days  involuntarily  15 
looked  at  each  other,  and  smiled ;  April  Fool  whistled  to  an  old 
tune  of  "New  Brooms;  "  and  a  surly  old  rebel  at  the  farther 
end  of  the  table  (who  was  discovered  to  be  no  other  than  the 
Fifth  of  NovemherY  muttered  out,  distinct!}^  enough  to  be 
heard  liy  the  whole  company,  words  to  this  effect — that  "  when  20 
the  old  one  is  gone,  he  is  a  fool  that  looks  for  a  better."  Which 
rudeness  of  his,  the  guests  resenting,  unanimously  voted  his 
expulsion;  and  the  malcontent  was  thrust  out  neck  and  heels 
into  the  cellar,  as  the  properest  place  for  such  a  houtefeu°  and 
firebrand  as  he  had  shown  himself  to  be.  25 

Order  being  restored  —  the  young  lord  (who,  to  say  truth, 
had  been  a  little  ruffled,  and  put  beside  his  oratory)  in  as  few, 
and  yet  as  obliging  words  as  possible,  assured  them  of  entire 
welcome;  and,  with  a  graceful  turn,  singling  out  poor  Ticenty- 
Ninth  of  February,  that  had  sate  all  this  while  mumchance°  at  ;^o 
the  side-board,  begged  to  couple  his  health  with  that  of  the 
good  company  before  him  —  which  he  drank  accordingly; 
observing,  that  he  had  not  seen  his  honest  face  any  time 
these  four  years,  with  a  number  of  endearing  expressions 
besides.  At  the  same  time  removing  the  solitary  Day  fnnn  35 
the  forlorn  seat  which  had  been  assigned  him,  he  stationed  him 
at  his  own  board,  somewhere  between  the  Greek  Calends  and 
Latter  Lammas, 

Ash  Wednesday,  being  now  called  upon  for  a  song,  with  his 


288  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

eyes  fast  stuck  in  his  bead,  and  as  well  as  the  Canary  he  had 
swallowed  would  give  him  leave,  struck  up  a  Carol,  which 
Christmas  Daij  had  taught  him  for  the  nonce'^;  and  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  latter,  who  gave  "  Miserere  "  in  fine  style,  hitting 
5  off  the  mumping  notes  and  lengthened  drawl  of  Old  Mortifica- 
tion with  infinite  humour.  April  Fool  swore  they  had  ex- 
changed conditions ;  but  Good  Friday  was  observed  to  look 
extremely  grave;  and  Siindaj/  held  her  fan  before  her  face  that 
she  might  not  be  seen  to  smile. 
10  Shroce-tide,  Lord  Mayor's  Day,  and  April  Fool,  next  joined  in 
a  glee  — 

Which  is  the  properest  day  to  drink  ? 

in  which  all  the  Days  chiming  in,  made  a  merry  burden. 

They  next  fell  to  quibbles  and  conundrums.     The  question 

15  being  proposed,  who  had  the  greatest  number  of  followers  — 
the  Quarter  Days  said,  there  could  be  no  question  as  to  that ; 
for  they  had  all  the  creditors  in  the  world  dogging  their  heels. 
But  April  Fool  gave  it  in  favour  of  the  Forty  Days  before  Easter ; 
because  the  debtors  in  all  cases  outnumbered  the  creditors,  and 

20  they  kept  Lent  all  the  year. 

All  this  while  Valentine's  Day  kept  courting  pretty  May,  who 
sate  next  him,  slipping  amorous  billets-doux  under  the  table,  till 
the  Dog  Days  (who  are  naturally  of  a  warm  constitution)  began 
to  be  jealous,  and  to  bark  and  rage  exceedingly.     April  Fool, 

25  who  likes  a  bit  of  sport  above  measure,  and  had  some  preten- 
sions to  the  lad}"  besides,  as  being  but  a  cousin  once  removed, 
—  clapped  and  halloo'd  them  on;  and  as  fast  as  their  indigna- 
tion cooled,  those  mad  wags,  the  Ember  Days,°  were  at  it  with 
their  bellows,  to  blow  it  into  a  flame;  and  all  was  in  a  ferment, 

30  till  old  i\Iadam  Septuagesima°  (who  boasts  herself  the  Mother  of 
the  Days)  wisely  diverted  the  conversation  with  a  tedious  tale 
of  the  lovers  which  she  could  reckon  when  she  was  young,  and 
of  one  Master  Rogation  Day"^  in  particular,  who  was  for  ever  put- 
ting the  question  to  her  ;  but  she  kept  him  at  a  distance,  as  the 

35  chronicle  would  tell — by  which  I  apprehend  she  meant  the  Al- 
manack. Then  she  rambled  on  to  the  Days  that  2oere  gone,  the 
good  old  Days,  and    so   to  the  Days  before  the  Flood  —  which 


THE    WEDDING  289 

plainly  showed  her  old  head  to  be  little  better  than  crazed  and 
doited. 

Day  being  ended,  the  Days  called  for  their  cloaks  and  great- 
coats, and  took  their  leaves.  Lord  Mayor  s  Day  went  off  in  a 
Mist,  as  usnal  ;  Shortest  Day  in  a  deep  black  Fog,  that  wrapt  5 
the  little  gentleman  all  round  like  a  hedgehog.  Two  Vigils  — 
so  watchmen  are  called  in  heaven  —  saw  Christinas  Day  safe 
home  —  they  had  been  used  to  the  business  before.  Another 
Vigil  —  a  stout,  sturdy  patrole,  called  the  Eve  of  St.  Christopher 
—  seeing  ylsA  Wednesday  in  a  condition  little  better  than  he  10 
should  be  —  e'en  whipt  him  over  his  shoulders,  pick-a-back 
fashion,  and  Old  Mortification  went  floating  home  singing  — 

On  the  bat's  back  do  I  fly, 

and  a  number  of  old  snatches  besides,  between  drunk  and  sober, 
but  very  few  Aves  or  Penitentiaries  (you  may  believe  me)  were  15 
among  them.  Longest  Day  set  off  westward  in  beautiful  crim- 
son and  gold  —  the  rest,  some  in  one  fashion,  some  in  another ; 
but  Valentine  and  pretty  May  took  their  departure  together  in 
one  of  the  prettiest  silvery  twilights  a  Lover's  Day  could  wish 
to  set  in.  20 


THE  WEDDING 

I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  been  better  pleased  than  at  being 
invited  last  week  to  be  present  at  the  wedding  of  a  friend's 
daughter.  I  like  to  make  one  at  these  ceremonies,  which  to  us 
old  people  give  back  our  youth  in  a  manner,  and  restore  our 
gayest  season,  in  the  remembrance  of  our  own  success,  or  the  25 
regrets,  scarcely  less  tender,  of  our  own  youthful  disappoint- 
ments, in  this  point  of  a  settlement.  On  these  occasions  1  am 
sure  to  be  in  good  humour  for  a  week  or  two  after,  and  enjoy  a 
reflected  honeymoon.  Being  without  a  family,  I  am  flattered 
with  these  temporary  adoptions  into  a  friend's  family;  I  feel  a'M 
sort  of  cousinhood,  or  uncleship,  for  the  season  ;  I  am  inducted 
into  degrees  of  affinity;  and,  in  the  participated  socialities  of 
tlie  little  community,  I  lay  down  for  a  brief  while  my  solitary 


290  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

bachelorship.  I  carry  this  humour  so  far,  that  T  take  it  unkindW 
to  be  left  out,  even  when  a  funeral  is  going  on  in  the  house  of  a 
dear  friend.     But  to  my  subject.  — 

The  union  itself  had  been  long  settled,  but  its  celebration  had 
5  been  hitherto  deferred,  to  an  almost  unreasonable  state  of  suspense 
in  the  lovers,  by  some  invincible  prejudices  which  the  bride's 
father  had  unhappily  contracted  upon  the  subject  of  the  too 
early  marriages  of  females.  He  has  been  lecturing  any  time 
these  five  years  — for  to  that  length  the  courtship  has  been  pro- 

10  tracted — upon  the  propriety  of  putting  off  the  solemnity,  till 
the  lady  should  have  completed  her  five  and  twentieth  year. 
We  all  began  to  be  afraid  that  a  suit,  which  as  yet  had  abated 
of  none  of  its  ardours,  might  at  last  be  lingered  on,  till  passion 
had  time  to   cool,  and  love  go  out  in  the  experiment.     But  a 

15  little  wheedling  on  the  part  of  his  wife,  who  was  by  no  means 
a  party  to  these  overstrained  notions,  joined  to  some  serious 
expostulations  on  that  of  his  friends,  who,  from  the  growing- 
infirmities  of  the  old  gentleman,  could  not  promise  ourselves 
many  years  enjoyment  of  his  company,  and  were  anxious  to 

20  bring  matters  to  a  conclusion  during  his  lifetime,  at  length  pre- 
vailed;   and  on  Monday  last  the  daughter  of    my  old  friend, 

Admiral ,  having  attained   the   womanly  age  of   nineteen, 

was  conducted  to  the  church  by  her  pleasant  cousin  J ,  who 

told  some  few  years  older. 

25  _  Before  the  youthful  part  of  my  female  readers  express  their 
indignation  at  the  abominable  loss  of  time  occasioned  to  the 
lovers  by  the  preposterous  notions  of  my  old  friend,  they  will 
do  well  to  consider  the  reluctance  which  a  fond  parent  naturally 
feels  at  parting  with  his  child.    To  this  unwillingness,  I  believe, 

30  in  most  cases  may  be  traced  the  difference  of  opinion  on  this 
point  between  child  and  parent,  wliatever  pretences  of  interest 
or  prudence  may  be  held  out  to  cover  it.  The  hard-heartedness 
of  fathers  is  a  fine  theme  for  romance  writers,  a  sure  and  moving 
topic  ;  but  is  there  not  something  un tender,  to  say  no  more  of 

35  it,  in  the  hurry  which  a  beloved  child  is  sometimes  in  to  tear 
herself  from  the  paternal  stock,  and  commit  herself  to  strange 
graftings?  The  case  is  heightened  where  the  lady,  as  in  th.' 
present  instance,  happens  to  be  an  only  child.  I  do  not  undei- 
stand  these  matters  experimentally,  but  1  can  make  a  shrewd 


THE    WEDDING  291 

guess  at  the  wounded  pride  of  a  parent  upon  these  occasions. 
It  is  no  new  observation,  I  believe,  that  a  lover  in  most  cases 
has  no  rival  so  much  to  be  feared  as  the  father.  Certainly 
there  is  a  jealousy  in  unparallel  suhjects,  which  is  little  less 
heartrending  than  the  passion  which  we  more  strictly  christen  5 
by  that  name.  Mothers'  scruples  are  more  easily  got  over;  for 
this  reason,  I  suppose,  that  the  protection  transferred  to  a  hus- 
band is  less  a  derogation  and  a  loss  to  their  authority  than  to 
the  paternal.  Mothers,  besides,  hav^e  a  trembling  foresight, 
which  paints  the  inconveniences  (impossible  to  be  conceived  in  10 
the  same  degree  by  the  other  parent)  of  a  life  of  forlorn  celi- 
bacy, which  the  refusal  of  a  tolerable  match  may  entail  upon 
their  child.  Mothers'  instinct  is  a  surer  guide  here  than  the 
cold  reasonings  of  a  father  on  such  a  topic.  To  this  instinct 
may  be  imputed,  and  by  it  alone  maybe  excused,  the  un beseem- 15 
ing  artifices,  by  which  some  M'ives  push  on  the  matrimonial 
projects  of  their  daughters,  which  the  husband,  however  approv- 
ing, shall  entertain  with  comparative  indifference.  A  little 
shamelessness  on  this  head  is  pardonable.  With  this  explana- 
tion, forwardness  becomes  a  grace,  and  maternal  importunity  20 
receives  the  name  of  a  virtue.  —  But  the  parson  stays,  while  I 
preposterously  assume  his  office  ;  I  am  preaching,  while  the 
bride  is  on  the  threshold. 

Nor  let  any  of  my  female  readers  suppose  that  the  sage 
reflections  which  have  just  escaped  me  have  the  obliquest  ten- 25 
dency  of  application  to  the  young  lady,  who,  it  will  be  seen,  is 
about  to  venture  upon  a  change  in  her  condition,  at  a  mature 
and  competent  age,  and  not  without  the  fullest  approbation  of 
all  parties.     I  only  deprecate    very  hasti/  marriaf/es. 

It  had  been  fixed  that  the  ceremony  should  be  gone  through  30 
at  an  early  hour,  to  give  time  for  a  little  dejeune  afterwards,  to 
which  a  select  party  of  friends  had  been  invited.     AVe  were  in 
church  a  little  before  the  clock    struck  eight. 

Nothing  could  be  more  judicious  or  graceful  than  the  dress 
of  the  bride-maids  —  the  three  charming  Miss  Foresters— on  35 
this  morning.  To  give  the  bride  an  opportunity  of  shining 
singly,  they  had  come  habited  all  in  green.  I  am  ill  at  de- 
scribing female  ap]>arel ;  but  while  she  stood  at  the  altar  in 
vestments  white  and  candid  as  her  thoughts,  a  sacrilicial  white- 


292  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

ness,  theij  assisted  in  robes  such  as  might  become  Diana's° 
nymphs  —  Foresters  indeed  —  as  such  who  had  not  yet  come 
to  the  resohition  of  putting  oft"  cold  yirginity.  These  young- 
maids,  not  being  so  blest  as  to  have  a  mother  living,  I  am  told, 
5  keep  single  for  their  father's  sake,  and  live  altogether  so  happy 
with  their  remaining  parent,  that  the  hearts  of  their  lovers  are 
ever  broken  with  the  prospect  (so  inauspicious  to  their  hopes) 
of  such  uninterrupted  and  provoking  home-comfort.  Gallant 
girls  !  each  a  victim  worthy  of  Iphigenia  ° ! 

10  I  do  not  know  what  business  I  have  to  be  present  in  solemn 
places.  I  cannot  divest  me  of  an  unseasonable  disptosition  to 
levity  upon  the  most  awful  occasions.  I  was  never  cut  out  for 
a  public  functionary.  Ceremony  and  I  have  long  shaken  hands ; 
but  I  could  not  resist  the  importunities  of  the  young  lady's 

15  father,  whose  gout  unhappily  confined  him  at  home,  to  act  as 
parent  on  this  occasion,  and  give  aLcay  the  bride.  Something 
ludicrous  occurred  to  me  at  this  most  serious  of  all  moments  — 
a  sense  of  my  unfitness  to  have  the  disposal,  even  in  imagina- 
nation,  of  the  sweet  young  creature   beside  me.     I  fear  I  was 

20  betrayed  to  some  lightness,  for  the  awful  eye  of  the  parson  — 
and  the  rector's  eye  of  St.  Mildred's  in  the  Poultry  is  no  trifle 
of  a  rebuke  —  was  upon  me  in  an  instant,  souring  my  incipient 
jest  to  the  tristful  severities  of  a  funeral. 

This  is  the  only  misbehaviour  which  I  can  plead  to  upon 

25  this  solemn  occasion,  unless  what  was  objected  to  me  after  the 

ceremony,  by  one  of  the   handsome  Miss  T s,  be  accounted 

a  solecism.  She  was  pleased  to  say  that  she  had  never  seen  a 
gentleman  before  me  give  away  a  bride,  in  black.  ]n[ow  black 
has  been  my  ordinary  apparel  so  long  —  indeed  I  take  it  to  be 

30  the  proper  costume  of  an  author  —  the  stage  sanctions  it  — 
that  to  have  appeared  in  some  lighter  colour  would  have  raised 
more  mirth  at  my  expense  than  the  anomaly  had  created 
censure.  But  I  could  perceive  that  the  bride's  mother,  and 
some   elderly  ladies  present   (God  bless   them ! )  would  have 

35  been  well  content,  if  I  had  come  in  any  other  colour  than  that. 
But  I  got  over  the  omen  by  a  lucky  apologue,  which  I  remem- 
bered out  of  Pilpay,  or  some  Indian  author,  of  all  the  birds 
being  invited  to  the  linnet's  wedding,  at  which,  when  all  the 
rest  came  in  their  gayest  feathers,  the  raven  alone  apologized 


THE    WEDDING  293 

for  his  cloak  because  "  he  had  no  other."  This  tolerably  recon- 
ciled the  elders.  But  with  the  young  people  all  was  merri- 
ment, and  shaking  of  hands,  and  congratulations,  and  kissing 
away  the  bride's  tears,  and  kissing  from  her  in  return,  till  a 
young  lady,  who  assumed  some  experience  in  these  matters,  5 
having  worn  the  nuptial  bands  some  four  or  five  weeks  longer 
than  her  friend,  rescued  her,  archly  observing,  with  half  an  ej'e 
upon  the  bridegroom,  that  at  this  rate  she  would  have  "  none 
left." 

My  friend  the  Admiral  was  in  fine  wig  and  buckle  on  this  10 
occasion — a  striking  contrast  to  his  usual  neglect  of  personal 
apj)earance.      He  did   not  once   shove  up  his  borrowed  locks 
(his  custom  ever  at  his  morning  studies)  to  betray  the  few  gray 
stragglers  of  his  own  beneath  them.     He  wore  an  aspect  of 
thoughtful  satisfaction.     I  trembled  for  the  hoar,  which    at  15 
length  approached,  when  after  a  protracted  breakfast  of  three 
hours  —  if  stores  of  cold  fowls,  tongues,  hams,  botargoes,  dried 
fruits,  wines,  cordials,  etc.,  can  deserve  so  meagre  an   appella- 
tion—  the  coach  was  announced,  which  was  come  to  carry  off 
the  bride  and  bridegroom  for  a  season,  as  custom  has  sensibly  20 
ordained,  into  the  country ;  upon  which  design,  wishing  them 
a  felicitous  journey,  let  us  return  to  the  assembled  guests. 

As  when  a  well -graced  actor  leaves  the  stage, 

The  eyes  of  men 

Are  icily  bent  on  him  that  enters  next,  25 

so  idly  did  we  bend  our  eyes  upon  one  another,  when  the  chief 
performers  in  the  morning's  pageant  had  vanished.  None  told 
his  tale.  None  sipt  her  glass.  The  poor  Admiral  made  an 
effort  —  it  was  not  much.  I  had  anticipated  so  far.  Even  the 
infinity  of  full  Satisfaction,  that  had  betrayed  itself  through  30 
the  prim  looks  and  quiet  deportment  of  his  lady,  began  to  wane 
into  something  of  misgiving.  No  one  knew  whether  to  take 
their  leaves  or  stay.  We  seemed  assembled  upon  a  silly  occa- 
sion. In  this  crisis,  betwixt  tarrying  and  departure,  I  must  do 
justice  to  a  foolish  talent  of  mine,  which  had  otherwise  like  to  35 
have  brought  me  into  disgrace  in  the  fore-part  of  the  day ; 
I  mean  a  power,  in  any  emergency,  of  thinking  and  giving  vent 
to  all  manner  of  strauixe  nonsense.     In  this  awkward  dilemma 


294  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELi\^ 

I  found  it  sovereign.  I  rattled  off  some  of  my  most  excellent 
absurdities.  All  were  ^Yilling  to  be  relieved,  at  any  expense  of 
reason,  from  the  pressure  of  the  intolerable  vacuum  which  had 
succeeded  to  the  morning  bustle.  By  this  means  I  was  fortu- 
5  nate  in  keeping  together  the  better  part  of  the  company  to  a 
late  hour;  and  a  rubber  of  whist  (the  Admiral's  favourite 
game)  with  some  rare  strokes  of  chance  as  well  as  skill,  which 
came  opportunely  on  his  side  —  lengthened  out  till  midnight  — 
dismissed  the  old  gentleman  at  last  to  his  bed  with  comparatively 

10  easy  spirits. 

I  have  been  at  my  old  friend's  various  times  since.  I  do  not 
know  a  visiting  place  where  every  guest  is  so  perfectly  at  his 
ease;  nowhere,  where  harmony  is  so  strangely  the  result  of  con- 
fusion.    Everybody  is  at  cross  purposes,  yet  the  effect  is  so  much 

15  better  than  uniformity.  Contradictory  orders  ;  servants  pulling 
one  way;  master  and  mistress  driving  some  other,  yet  both 
diverse ;  visitors  huddled  up  in  corners  ;  chairs  unsymmetrized  ; 
candles  disposed  by  chance ;  meals  at  odd  hours,  tea  and  supper 
at  once,  or  the  latter  preceding  the  former  ;  the  host  and  the 

20  guest  conferring,  yet  each  upon  a  different  topic,  each  under- 
standing himself,  neither  trying  to  understand  or  hear  the  other; 
draughts  and  politics,  chess  and  political  economy,  cards  and 
conversation  on  nautical  matters,  going  on  at  once,  without  the 
hope,  or  indeed  the  wish,  of  distinguishing  them,  make  it  alto- 

25  gether  the  most  perfect  concordia  discors  you  shall  meet  with. 
Yet  somehow  the  old  house  is  not  quite  what  it  should  be.  The 
Admiral  still  enjoys  his  pipe,  but  he  has  no  Miss  Emily  to  fill 
it  for  him.  The  instrument  stands  where  it  stood,  but  she  is 
gone,  whose  delicate  touch  could  sometimes  for  a  short  minute 

30  appease  the  warring  elements.  He  has  learnt,  as  Marvel  ex- 
presses it,  to  "  make  his  destiny  his  choice."  He  bears  bravely 
up,  but  he  does  not  come  out  with  his  flashes  of  M'ild  wit  so 
thick  as  formerly.  His  sea-songs  seldomer  escape  him.  His 
wife,  too,  looks  as  if  she  wanted  some  younger  body  to  scold 

35  and  set  to  rights.  "We  all  miss  a  junior  presence.  It  is  wonder- 
ful how  one  young  maiden  freshens  up,  and  keeps  green,  the 
paternal  roof.  Old  and  young  seem  to  have  an  interest  in  her, 
so  long  as  she  is  not  absolutely  disposed  of.  The  youtlifulness 
of  the  house  is  flown.     Emily  is  married. 


THE    CHILD    ANGEL:    A    DREAM  295 


THE   CHILD   ANGEL:  A  DREAM 

I  CHANCED  upon  the  prettiest,  oddest,  fantastical  thing  of 
a  dream  the  other  night,  that  you  shall  hear  of.  I  had  been 
reading  the  "  Loves  of  the  Angels,°"  and  went  to  bed  with  my 
head  full  of  speculations,  suggested  by  that  extraordinary 
legend.  It  had  given  birth  to  innumerable  conjectures;  and,  1 5 
remember,  the  last  waking  thought,  which  I  gave  expression  to 
on  my  pillow,  was  a  sort  of  wonder,  "  what  could  come  of  it." 

I  was  suddenly  transported,  how  or  whither  I  could  scarcely 
make  out  —  but  to  some  celestial  region.  It  was  not  the  real 
heavens  neither  • —  not  the  downright  Bible  heaven  —  but  a  10 
kind  of  fairyland  heaven,  about  which  a  poor  human  fancy 
may  have  leave  to  sport  and  air  itself,  I  will  hope,  without 
presumption. 

Methought  —  what  wild  things  dreams  are  !  —  I  was  present 

—  at  what  would  you  imagine  ? —  at  an  angel's  gossiping.^  15 
Whence  it  came,  or  how  it  came,  or  who  .  bid  it  come,  or 

whether  it  came  purely  of  its  own  head,  neither  you  nor  I 
know  —  but  there  lay,  sure  enough,  wrapt  in  its  cloudy  swad- 
dling-bands —  a  Child  Angel. 

Sun-threads  —  filmy  beams  —  ran  through  the  celestial  napery  20 
of  what  seemed  its  princely  cradle.  All  the  winged  orders 
hovered  round,  watching  when  the  new-born  should  open  its 
yet  closed  eyes  ;  which,  when  it  did,  first  one,  and  then  the 
other  —  with  a  solicitude  and  apprehension,  yet  not  such  as, 
stained  with  fear,  dim  the  expanding  eyelids  of  mortal  infants,  25 
but  as  if  to  explore  its  path  in  those  its  unhereditary  palaces 

—  what  an  inextinguishable  titter  that  time  spared  not  celestial 
visages!  Nor  wanted  thereto  my  seeming  —  O  the  inexplica- 
ble sinipleuess  of  dreams  !  — bowls  of  that  cheering  nectar, 

—  which  mortals  caudle  call  below.  30 

Nor  were  wanting  faces  of  female  ministrants,  —  stricken  in 
years,  as  it  might  seem,  —  so  dexterous  were  those  heavenly 
attendants  to  counterfeit  kindly  similitndes  of  earth,  to  greet 
with  terrestrial  child-rites  the  young  ^jmsew^  which  earth  had 
made  to  heaven,  35 


296  THE    ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

Then  were  celestial  harpings  heard,  not  in  full  symphony  as 
those  by  which  the  spheres  are  tutored  ;  but,  as  loudest  instru- 
ments on  earth  speak  oftentimes,  muffled ;  so  to  accommodate 
their  sound  the  better  to  the  weak  ears  of  the  imperfect-born. 
5  And,  with  the  noise  of  these  subdued  soundings,  the  Angelet 
sprang  forth,  fluttering  its  rudiments  of  pinions — but  forth- 
with flagged  and  was  recovered  into  the  arms  of  those  full- 
winged  angels.  And  a  wonder  it  was  to  see  how,  as  years 
went  round  in  heaven  —  a  year  in  dreams  is  as  a  day  —  continu- 

10  ally  its  white  shoulders  put  forth  buds  of  wings,  but  wanting 
the  perfect  angelic  nutriment,  aiion'was  shorn  of  its  aspiring, 
and  fell  fluttering  —  still  caught  by  angel  hands  for  ever  to  put 
forth  shoots,  and  to  fall  fluttering,  because  its  birth  was  not  of 
the  unmixed  vigour  of  heaven. 

15  And  a  name  was  given  to  the  Babe  Angel,  and  it  was  to  be 
called  Ge-Urama°  because  its  production  was  of  earth  and 
heaven. 

And  it  could  not  taste  of  death,  by  reason  of  its  adoption 
into  immortal  palaces;  but  it  was  to  know  weakness,  and  reli- 

20ance,  and  the  shadow  of  human  imbecilit}";  and  it  went  with 
a  lame  gait ;  but  in  its  goings  it  exceeded  all  mortal  children 
in  grace  and  swiftness.  Then  pity  first  sprang  up  in  angelic 
bosoms ;  and  yearnings  (like  the  human)  touched  them  at  the 
sight  of  the  immortal  lame  one. 

25  And  with  pain  did  then  first  those  Intuitive  Essences,  with 
pain  and  strife  to  their  natures  (not  grief),  put  back  their 
bright  intelligences,  and  reduce  their  ethereal  minds,  school- 
ing them  to  degrees  and  slower  processes,  so  to  adapt  their 
lessons  to  tlie  gradual  illumination   (as  must  needs  be)  of  the 

30  half-earth-born ;  and  what  intuitive  notices  they  could  not 
repel  (by  reason  that  their  nature  is,  to  know  all  things  at 
once),  the  half-heavenly  novice,  by  the  better  part  of  its  nature, 
aspired  to  receive  into  its  understanding ;  so  that  Humility  and 
Aspiration  went  on  even-paced  in  the  instruction  of  the  glori- 

35  ous  Amphibium. 

But,  by  reason  that  ^Mature  Humanity  is  too  gross  to  breathe 
the  air  of  that  super-subtile  region,  its  portion  was,  and  is,  to 
be  a  child  for  ever. 

And  because  the  human  part  of  it  might  not  press  into  the 


A    DEATH-BED  297 

heart  and  inwards  of  the  palace  of  its  adoption,  those  full- 
natured  angels  tended  it  by  turns  in  the  purlieus  of  the  palace, 
where  were  shady  groves  and  rivulets,  like  this  green  earth  from 
which  it  came ;  so  Love,  with  Voluntary  Humility,  waited  upon 
the  entertainment  of  the  new-adopted.  5 

And  myriads  of  years  rolled  round  (in  dreams  Time  is  noth- 
ing), and  still  it  kept,  and  is  to  keep,  perpetual  childhood,  and 
is  the  Tutelar  Genius°  of  Childhood  upon  earth,  and  still  goes 
lame  and  lovely. 

By  the  banks  of  the  river  Pison  is  seen,  lone  sitting  by  the  10 
grave  of  the  terrestrial  Adah,  whom  the  angel  Nadir  loved,  a 
Child ;  but  not  the  same  which  I  saw  in  heaven.  A  mournful 
hue  overcasts  its  lineaments  ;  nevertheless,  a  correspondency  is 
between  the  child  by  the  grave,  and  that  celestial  orphan,  whom 
I  saw  above;  and  the  dimness  of  the  grief  upon  the  heavenW,  15 
is  a  shadow  or  emblem  of  that  which  stains  the  beauty  of  the 
terrestrial.  And  this  correspondency  is  not  to  be  understood 
but  by  dreams. 

And  in  the  archives  of  heaven  I  had  grace  to  read,  how  that 
once  the  angel  Nadir,  being  exiled  from  his  place  for  mortal  20 
passion,  upspringing  on  the  wings  of  parental  love  (such  power 
had  parental  love  for  a  moment  to  susj^end  the  else-irrevocable 
law)  appeared  for  a  brief  instant  in  his  station ;  and,  depositing 
a  wondrous  Birth,  straightway  disappeared,  and  the  palaces 
knew  him  no  more.  And  this  charge  was  the  self-same  Babe,  25 
who  goeth  lame  and  lovely  —  but  Adah  sleepeth  by  the  river 
Pison. 


A  DEATH-BED 

tN   A   LETTER    TO    R.    H.    ESQR.    OF    B 

I  CALLED  upou  you  this  morning  and  found  that  you  were 
gone  to  visit  a  dying  friend.  I  had  been  upon  a  like  errand. 
Poor  N.  R.°  has  lain  dying  now  for  almost  a  week  ;  such  is  the  30 
penalty  we  pay  for  liaving  enjoyed  through  life  a  strong  con- 
stitution. Wliether  he  knew  me  or  not,  I  know  not,  or  whether 
he  saw  me  through  his  poor  glazed  eyes ;  but  the  group  I  saw 


298  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

about  him  I  shall  not  forget.  Upon  the  bed,  or  about  it,  were 
assembled  his  wife,  their  two  daughters,  and  poor  deaf  Robert, 
looking  doubly  stupefied. 

There  they  were,  and  seemed  to  have  been  sitting  all  the 
5  week.  I  could  only  reach  out  a  hand  to  Mrs.  R.  Speaking  was 
impossible  in  that  mute  chamber.  By  this  time  it  must  be 
all  over  with  him.  In  him  I  have  a  loss  the  world  cannot 
make  up.  He  was  my  friend,  and  my  father's  friend,  for  all 
the  life  that  I  can  remember.     I  seem  to  have  made  foolish 

10  friendships  since.  Those  are  the  friendships,  which  outlast  a 
second  generation.  Old  as  I  am  getting,  in  his  eyes  I  was  still 
the  child  he  knew  me.  To  the  last  he  called  me  Jemmy. °  I 
have  none  to  call  me  Jemmy  now.  He  was  the  last  link  that 
bound  me  to  B °    You  are  but  of  yesterday.     In  him  I  seem 

15  to  have  lost  the  old  plainness  of  manners  and  singleness  of 
heart.  Lettered  he  was  not ;  his  reading  scarce  exceeded  the 
Obituary  of  the  Old  Gentleman's  Magazine,  to  which  he  has 
never  failed  of  having  recourse  for  these  last  fifty  years.  Yet 
there  was  the  pride  of  literature  about  him  from  that  slender 

20  perusal ;  and  moreover  from  his  office  of  archive-keeper  to  your 
ancient  city  —  in  which  he  must  needs  pick  up  some  equivocal 
Latin,  which  among  his  less  literary  friends  assunjed  the  air  of 
a  very  pleasant  pedantry.  Can  I  forget  the  erudite  look  with 
which,  having  tried  to  puzzle  out  the  text  of  a  Black-lettered 

25  Chaucer  in  your  Corporation  Library,  to  which  he  was  a  sort 
of  Librarian,  he  gave  it  up  with  this  consolatory  reflection  :  — 
"Jemmy,"  said  he,  "  I  do  not  know  what  you  find  in  these  very 
old  books,  but  I  observe,  there  is  a  deal  of  very  indifferent 
spelling  in  them."      His  jokes  (for  he  had  some")  are  ended; 

30  but  they  were  old  Perennials,  staple,  and  always  as  good  as 
new.  He  had  one  Song,  that  spake  of  the  "  flat  bottoms  of  our 
foes  coming  over  in  darkness,"  and  alluded  to  a  threatened  In- 
vasion, many  years  since  blown  over;  this  he  reserved  to  be 
sung  on  Christmas  Xight,  which  we  always  passed  with  him, 

35  and  he  sang  it  with  the  freshness  of  an  impending  event.  How 
his  eyes  would  sparkle  when  he  came  to  the  passage  :  — 

We'll  still  make  'era  run,  and  we'll  still  make  'em  sweat, 
In  spite  of  the  devil  and  Brnssels'  Gazette. 


OLD    CHINA  299 

What  is  the  Brussels'  Gazette  now?  I  ciy,  while  I  endite 
these  trifles.  His  poor  girls  who  are,  I  believe,  compact  of 
solid  goodness,  will  have  to  receive  their  afiiicted  mother  at  an 

unsuccessful  home  in  a  petty  village  in  shire,  where  for 

years  they  have  been  struggling  to  raise  a  Girls'  School  with  no  5 
effect.     Poor  deaf  Robert  (and  the  less  hopeful  for  being  so)  is 
thrown  upon  a  deaf  world,  without  the  comfort  to  his  father  on 
his  death-bed   of  knowing  him  provided   for.      The}^  are  left 
almost  provisionless.     Some  life  assurance  there  is  ;  but,  I  fear, 

not  exceeding .     Their  hopes  must  be  from  your  Corpora- 10 

tion,  which  their  father  has  served  for  fifty  years.  Who  or 
what  are  your  Leading  Members  now,  I  know  not.  Is  there 
any  to  whom  without  impertinence,  you  can  represent  the  true 
circumstances  of  the  family?  You  cannot  say  good  enough  of 
poor  R.,  and  his  poor  wife.  Oblige  me  and  the  dead,  if  you  15 
can. 


OLD  cnmA 


I  HAVE  an  almost  feminine  partiality  for  old  china.  When 
I  go  to  see  any  great  house,  I  inquire  for  the  china-closet,  and 
next  for  the  picture-gallery.  I  cannot  defend  the  order  of  pref- 
erence, but  by  saying  that  we  have  all  some  taste  or  other,  of 
too  ancient  a  date  to  admit  of  our  remembering  distinctly  that  20 
it  was  an  acquired  one.  I  can  call  to  mind  the  first  play,  and 
the  first  exhibition,  that  I  was  taken  to  ;  but  I  am  not  conscious 
of  a  time  when  china  jars  and  saucers  were  introduced  into  my 
imagination. 

I  had  no  repugnance  then  —  why  should  I  now  have?  —  to  25 
those  little,  lawless,  azure-tinctured  grotesques,  that,  under  the 
notion  of  men  and  women,  float  about,  uncircum scribed  by  any 
element,  in  that  world  before  perspective  —  a  china  tea-cup.  _ 

I  like  to  see  my  old  friends  —  whom  distance  cannot  diminish 
—  figuring  up  in  the  air  (so  they  appear  to  our  optics),  yet  on  .'^ 
terra  Jirma  still  —  for   so  we  must    in  courtesy  interpret   that 
speck  of   deeper   blue,  which  the    decorous   artist,  to   prevent 
absurdity,  had  made  to  spring  up  beneath  their  sandals. 


300  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

I  love  the  men  with  women's  faces,  and  the  women,  if  pos- 
sible, with  still  more  womanish  expressions. 

Here  is  a  young  and  courtly  Mandarin,  handing  tea  to  a  lady 
from  a  salver  —  two  miles  off.  See  how  distance  seems  to  set 
5  off  respect !  And  here  the  same  lady,  or  another  —  for  likeness 
is  identity  on  tea-cups  —  is  stepping  into  a  little  fairy  boat, 
moored  on  the  hither  side  of  this  calm  garden  river,  with  a 
dainty  mincing  foot,  which  in  a  right  angle  of  incidence  (as 
angles  go  in  our  world)  must  infallibly  land  her  in  the  midst 

10  of  a  flowery  mead —  a  furlong  off  on  the  other  side  of  the  same 
strange  stream ! 

Farther  on —  if  far  or  near  can  be  predicated  of  their  world 
—  see  horses,  trees,  pagodas,  dancing  the  hays.° 

Here  —  a  cow   and   rabbit  couchant,°  and   coextensive  —  so 

15  objects  show,  seen  through  the  lucid  atmosphere  of  fine 
Cathay.° 

I  was  pointing  out  to  my  cousin  last  evening,  over  our  Hysori 
(which  we  are  old-fashioned  enough  to  drink  unmixed  still  of 
an  afternoon),  some  of  these  speciosa  miracida°  upon  a  set  of 

20  extraordinary  old  blue  china  (a  recent  purchase)  which  we 
were  now  for  the  first  time  using ;  and  could  not  help  remark- 
ing, how  favourable  circumstances  had  been  to  us  of  late  years, 
that  we  could  afford  to  please  the  eye  sometimes  with  triiles  of 
this  sort  —  when  a  passing  sentiment  seemed  to  overshade  the 

25  brows  of  my  companion.  I  am  quick  at  detecting  these  summer 
clouds°  in  Bridget. 

"I  wish  the  good  old  times  would  come  again,"  she  said, 
"  when  we  were  not  quite  so  rich.  I  do  not  mean  that  I  want 
to  be  poor;  but  there  was  a  middle  state"  —  so  she  was  pleased 

30 to  ramble  on,  —  "in  which  I  am  sure  we  were  a  great  deal 
happier.  A  purchase  is  but  a  purchase,  now  that  you  have 
money  enough  and  to  spare.  Formerly  it  used  to  be  a  triumph. 
When  we  coveted  a  cheap  luxury  (and,  O  !  how  much  ado  I  had 
to  get  you  to  conselit  in  those  times  I),  we  were  used  to  have  a 

ob  debate  two  or  three  days  before,  and  to  weigh  the  for  and 
against,  and  think  what  we  might  spare  it  out  of,  and  what 
saving  we  could  hit  upon,  that  should  be  an  equivalent.  A 
thing  was  worth  buying  then,  when  we  felt  the  money  that  we 
paid  for  it. 


OLD    CHmA  301 

"  Do  you  remember  the  brown  suit,  which  you  made  to  hang 
upon  you,  till  all  your  friends  cried  shame  upon  you,  it  grew  so 
threadbare  —  and  all  because  of  that  folio  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  which  you  dragged  home  late  at  night  from  Barker's 
in  Covent-garden?  Do  you  remember  how  we  eyed  it  for  weeks  5 
before  we  could  make  up  our  minds  to  the  purchase,  and  had 
not  come  to  a  determination  till  it  was  near  ten  o'clock  of  the 
Saturday  night,  when  you  set  off  from  Islington,  fearing  you 
should  he  too  late  —  and  when  the  old  bookseller  with  some 
grumbling  opened  his  shop,  and  by  the  twinkling  taper  (for  he  10 
was  setting  bedvvards)  lighted  out  the  relic  from  his  dusty  treas- 
ures—  and  when  you  lugged  it  home,  wishing  it  were  twice  as 
cumbersome  —  and  wdien  you  presented  it  to  me  —  and  when 
we  were  exploring  the  perfectness  of  it  {collating  you  called  it) 

—  and  while  I  was  repairing  some  of  the  loose  leaves  with  paste,  15 
which  your  impatience  would  not  suffer  to  be  left  till  daybreak 

—  was  there  no  pleasure  in  being  a  poor  man?  or  can  those  neat 
black  clothes  which  you  wear  now,  and  are  so  careful  to  keep 
brushed,  since  we  have  become  rich  and  finical,  give  you  half 
the  honest  vanity  wdth  which  you  flaunted  it  about  in  that  over- 20 
worn  suit  —  your  old  corbeau°  —  for  four  or  five  weeks  longer 
than  you  should  have  done,  to  pacify  your  conscience  for  the 
mighty  sum  of  fifteen  —  or  sixteen  shillings  was  it?  —  a  great 
affair  we  thought  it  then  —  which  you  had  lavished  on  the  old 
folio.  Now  you  can  afford  to  buy  any  book  that  pleases  you,  25 
but  I  do  not  see  that  you  ever  bring  me  home  any  nice  old 
purchases  now^ 

"  When  you  came  home  with  twenty  apologies  for  laying  out 
a  less  number  of  shillings  upon  that  print  after  Lionardo, 
which  we  christened  the  '  Lady  Blanch  ; '  when  you  looked  at  30 
the  purchase,  and  thought  of  the  money — and  thought  of  the 
money,  and  looked  again  at  the  picture —  was  there  no  pleasure 
in  being  a  poor  man"?  Now,  you  have  nothing  to  do  but  to 
walk  into  Colnaghi's,  and  buy  a  wilderness  of  Lionardos.""  Yet 
do  you  ?  35 

"Then,  do  you  remember  our  pleasant  walks  to  Enfield,  and 
Potter's  bar,  and  AValtham,  when  we  had  a  holyday  —  holydays 
and  all  other  fun  are  gone  now^  w^e  are  rich  —  and  tlu^  little 
handbasket  in  which  I  used  to  deposit  our  day's  fare  of  savoury 


302  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

cold  lamb  and  salad — and  how  you  would  pry  about  at  noon- 
tide for  some  decent  house,  where  we  might  go  in  and  produce 
our  store — only  paying  for  the  ale  that  you  must  call  for  — 
and  speculate  upon  the  looks  of  the  landlady,  and  whether  she 
5  was  likely  to  allow  us  a  tablecloth  —  and  wish  for  such  another 
honest  hostess  as  Izaak  Walton  has  described  many  a  one  on 
the  pleasant  banks  of  the  Lea,  when  he  went  a  fishing  —  and 
sometimes  they  would  prove  obliging  enough,  and  sometimes 
they  would  look  grudgingly  upon  us  — but  we  had  cheerful  looks 

10  still  for  one  another,  and  would  eat  our  plain  food  savourily, 
scarcely  grudging  Piscator  his  Trout  Hall  ?  Xow  —  when  we 
go  out  for  a  day's  pleasuring,  w^hich  is  seldom,  moreover,  we 
ride  part  of  the  way  and  go  into  a  fine  inn,  and  order  the  best 
of  dinners,  never    debating    the    expense  —  which,  after    all, 

15  never  has  half  the  relish  of  those  chance  country  snaps,  when 
we  were  at  the  mercy  of  uncertain  usage,  and  a  precarious 
welcome. 

"  You  are  too  proud  to  see  a  play  anywhere  now  but  in  the 
pit.     Do  you  remember  where  it  was  we  used  to  sit,  when  we 

20  saw  the  battle  of  Hexham,  and  the  Surrender  of  Calais,  and 
Bannister  and  ]\lrs.  Bland  in  the  Children  in  the  Wood°  — 
when  we  squeezed  out  our  shillings  apiece  to  sit  three  or  four 
times  in  a  season  in  the  one-shilling  gallery  —  where  yon  felt 
all  the  time  that  you  ought  not  to   have  brought  me  —  and 

25  more  strongly  I  felt  obligation  to  you  for  having  brought  me  — 
and  the  pleasure  was  the  better  for  a  little  shame  —  and  when 
the  curtain  drew  up,  what  cared  we  for  our  place  in  the  house, 
or  Mdiat  mattered  it  where  we  were  sitting,  when  our  thoughts 
were  with  Rosalind  in  Arden,°  or  with  Viola  at  the  Court  of 

30  Illyria°  ?  You  used  to  say  that  the  gallery  was  the  best  place 
of  all  for  enjoying  a  play  socially  —  that  the  relish  of  such 
exhibitions  must  be  in  proportion  to  the  infrequency  of  going 
—  that  the  company  we  met  there,  not  being  in  general  readers 
of  plays,  were  obliged  to  attend  the  more,  and  did  attend,  to 

35  what  was  going  on,  on  the  stage  —  because  a  word  lost  would 
have  been  a  chasm,  which  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  fill  up. 
With  such  reflections  we  consoled  our  pride  then  —  and  I 
appeal  to  you  whether,  as  a  woman,  I  met  generally  with  less 
attention  and  accommodation  than  I  have  done  since  in  more 


OLD    CHINA  303 

expensive  situations  in  the  house  ?     The  getting  in,  indeed,  and 
the  crowding  up  those  inconvenient  staircases,  was  bad  enough, 

—  but  there  was  still  a  law  of  civility  to  woman  recognized  to 
quite  as  great  an  extent  as  we  ever  found  in  the  other  passages 

—  and  how  a  little  difficulty  overcome   heightened  the  snugs 
seat,  and  the  play,  afterwards  !      Now  we  can  only  pay  our 
money,  and  walk  in.     You  cannot  see,  you  say,  in  the  galleries 
now.     I  am  sure  we  saw,  and  heard  too,  well  enough  then  — 
but  sight,  and  all,  I  think,  is  gone  with  our  poverty. 

"  There  was  pleasure  in  eating  strawberries,  before  they  lO 
became  quite  common  —  in  the  first  dish  of  peas,  while  they 
were  yet  dear  —  to  have  them  for  a  nice  supper,  a  treat.  What 
treat  can  we  have  now?  If  we  w^ere  to  treat  ourselves  now  — 
that  is,  to  have  dainties  a  little  above  our  means,  it  would  be 
selfish  and  wicked.  It  is  the  very  little  more  that  we  allow  15 
ourselves  beyond  what  the  actual  poor  can  get  at,  that  makes 
wliat  I  call  a  treat — when  two  people  living  together,  as  we 
have  done,  now  and  then  indulge  themselves  in  a  cheap  luxury, 
which  both  like  ;  while  eacli  apologizes,  and  is  willing  to  take 
both  halves  of  the  blame  to  his  single  share.  I  see  no  harm  in  20 
people  making  much  of  themselves  in  that  sense  of  the  word. 
It  may  give  them  a  hint  how  to  make  much  of  others.  But 
now  —  what  I  mean  by  the  word  —  we  never  do  make  much  of 
ourselves.  None  but  the  poor  can  do  it.  I  do  not  mean  the 
veriest  poor  of  all,  but  persons  as  we  were,  just  above  poverty.  25 

"  I  know^  what  you   were   going   to   say,    that   it  is  mighty 
pleasant  at  the  end  of  the  year  to  make  all  meet,  —  and  much 
ado  we  used  to  have  every  Thirty-first  Night  of  December  to 
account  for  our  exceedings  —  many  a  long  face  did  you  make 
over  your  puzzled  accounts,  and  in  contriving  to  make  it  out  how  30 
w^e  had  spent  so  much  —  or  that  we  had  not  spent  so  much  —  or 
that  it  was  impossible  we  should  spend  so  much  next  year  —  and 
still  we  found  our  slender  capital  decreasing  — but  then,  betwixt 
ways,  and  projects,  and  compromises  of  one  sort  or  another,  and 
talk  of  curtailing  this  charge,  and  doing  without  that  for  the  35 
future  — and  the  hope  that  youth  brings,  and  laughing  spirits 
(in  which  you  were  never  poor  till  now),  we  pocketed  up  our 
loss,  and  in  conclusion,  with  'lusty  brimmers'  (as  you  used  to     . 
quote  it  out  of  hearty,  cheerful  Mr.  Cotio7i,a,H  yon  called  him), 


304  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

we  used  to  welcome  in  the  '  coming  guest.'  Xow  we  have 
no  reckoning  at  all  at  the  end  of  the  old  year  —  no  flattering 
promises  about  the  new  year  doing  better  for  us." 

Bridget  is  so  sparing  of  her  speech  on  most  occasions,  that 
5  when  she  gets  into  a  rhetorical  vein,  I  am  careful  how  I  inter- 
rupt it.     I  could  not  help,  however,  smiling  at  the  phantom  of 
wealth  which  her  dear  imagination  had  conjured  up  out  of  a 

clear  income  of  poor hundred  pounds  a  year.     •'  It  is  true 

we  were  happier  when  we  were  poorer,  but  we  were  also  younger, 

10  my  cousin.  I  am  afraid  we  must  put  up  with  the  excess,  for  if 
we  were  to  shake  the  superflux°  into  the  sea,  we  should  not 
much  mend  ourselves.  That  we  had  much  to  struggle  with, 
as  we  grew  up  together,  we  have  reason  to  be  most  thankful. 
It  strengthened  and  knit  our  compact  closer.     We  could  never 

15  have  been  what  we  have  been  to  each  other,  if  we  had  always 
had  the  sufficiency  which  you  now  complain  of.  The  resisting 
power  —  those  natural  dilations  of  the  youthful  spirit,  which  cir- 
cumstances cannot  straiten  —  with  us  are  long  since  passed  away. 
Competence  to  age  is  supplementary  youth,  a  sorry  supplement 

20  indeed,  but  I  fear  the  best  that  is  to  be  had.  We  must  ride, 
where  we  formerly  walked :  live  better,  and  lie  softer  —  and 
shall  be  wise  to  do  so  —  than  we  had  means  to  do  in 
those  good  old  days  you  speak  of.  Yet  could  those  days 
return  —  could  you  and  I  once  more  walk  our  thirty  miles  a 

25  day  —  could  Bannister  and  Mrs.  Bland  again  be  young,  and  you 
and  I  be  young  to  see  them — could  the  good  old  one-shilling 
gallery  days  return  —  they  are  dreams,  mj  cousin,  now  —  but 
could  you  and  I  at  this  moment,  instead  of  this  quiet  argument, 
by  our  well-carpeted  fireside,  sitting  on  this  luxurious  sofa  — 

30  be  once  more  struggling  up  those  inconvenient  staircases, 
pushed  about,  and  squeezed,  and  elbowed  by  the  poorest  rabble 
of  poor  gallery  scramblers  —  could  I  once  more  hear  those 
anxious  shrieks  of  yours  —  and  the  delicious  Thanh  God,  we  are 
mfe,  which  always  followed  when  the  topmost  stair,  conquered, 

35  let  in  the  first  light  of  the  whole  cheerful  theatre  down  beneath 
us  —  I  know  not  the  fathom  line  that  ever  touched  a  descent  so 
deep  as  I  would  be  willing  to  bury  more  wealth  in  than  Croesus" 

had,  or  the  great  Jew  R °  is  supposed  to  have,  to  purchase 

it.     And  now  do  just  look  at  that  merry  little  Chinese  waiter 


POPULAR    FALLACIES  305 

holding  an  umbrella,  big  enough  for  a  bed-tester,  over  the  head 
of  that  pretty  insipid  half-Madonna-ish  chit  of  a  lady  in  that 
very  blue  summer-house. 


POPULAR  FALLACIES 


THAT    A    BULLY   IS    ALWAYS    A    COWARD 

This  axiom  contains  a  principle  of  compensation,  which  dis- 
poses us  to  admit  the  truth  of  it.     But  there  is  no  safe  trusting  5 
to  dictionaries  and  definitions.     We  should  more  willingly  fall 
in  with  this  popular  language,  if  we  did  not  find  brutality  some- 
times awkwardly  coupled  with  valour  in  the  same  vocabulary- 
The  comic  writers,  with  their  poetical  justice,  have  contributed 
not  a  little  to  mislead  us  upon  this  point.     To  see  a  hectoring  ifl 
fellow  exposed  and  beaten  upon  the  stage,  has  something  in  it 
wonderfully  diverting.     Some  people's  share  of  animal  spirits 
is  notoriously  low  and  defective.     It  has  not  strength  to  raise  a 
vapour,  or  furnish  out  the  wind  of  a  tolerable  bluster.     These 
love  to  be  told  that  huffing  is  no  part  of  valour.     The  truest  15 
courage   with   them    is    that   which   is   the    least    noisy    and 
obtrusive.     But  confront  one  of   these  silent  heroes  with  the 
swaggerer  of  real  life,  and  his  confidence  in  the  theory  quickly 
vanishes.     Pretensions  do  not   uniformly   bespeak  non-perfor- 
mance.    A  modest,  inoffensive  deportment  does  not  necessarily  20 
imply  valour;  neither  does  the  absence  of  it  justify  us  in  deny- 
ing that  quality.     Hickman°  wanted  modesty  —  we  do  not  mean 
him  of  Clarissa  —  but  who  ever  doubted  his  courage?      Even 
the  poets  —  upon  whom  this  equitable  distribution  of  qualities 
should  be  most  binding  —  have  thought  it  agreeable  to  nature  25 
to   depart   from   the   rule    upon   occasion.      Harapha,    in   the 
''  Agonistes,"    is   indeed   a   bully    upon    the   received   notions. 
Milton  has  made  him  at  once  a  blusterer,  a  giant,  and  a  das- 
tard.    But  Almanzor,  in  Dryden,°  talks  of  driving  armies  singly 
before  him  —  and  does  it.     Tom  Brown  had  a  shrewder  insight  30 
into  this  kind  of  character  than  either  of  his  predecessors,     lie 

X 


30G  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELIA- 

divides  the  palm  more  equably,  and  allows  his  hero  a  sort  of 
dimidiate  pre-eminence: — ''Bully  Dawson  kicked  by  half  the 
town,  and  half  the  town  kicked  by  Bully  Dawson."  This  was 
true  distributive  justice. 


THAT    ILL-GOTTEN   GAIN   NEVER    PROSPERS 

5  The  weakest  part  of  mankind  have  this  saying  commonest  in 
their  mouth.  It  is  the  trite  consolation  administered  to  the 
easy  dupe,  when  he  has  been  tricked  out  of  his  money  or  estate, 
that  the  acquisition  of  it  will  do  the  owner  no  good.  But  the 
rogues  of  this  world  —  the  prudenter  part  of  them  at  least, — 

10  know  better ;  and  if  the  observation  had  been  as  true  as  it  is 
old,  would  not  have  failed  by  this  time  to  have  discovered  it. 
They  have  pretty  sharp  distinctions  of  the  fluctuating  and  the 
permanent.  "  Lightly  come,  lightly  go,"  is  a  proverb  which 
they   can    very  well    afford    to  leave,  when    they    leave   little 

15  else,  to  the  losers.  They  do  not  always  find  manors,  got  by 
rapine  or  chicanery,  insensibly  to  melt  away  as  the  poets  will 
have  it ;  or  that  all  gold  glides,  like  thawing  snow,  from  the 
thief's  hand  that  grasps  it.  Church  land,  alienated  to  lay  uses, 
was  formerly  denounced    to   have   this  slippery  quality.     But 

20  some  portions  of  it  somehow  always  stuck  so  fast,  that  the 
denunciators  have  been  fain  to  postpone  the  prophecy  of 
refundment  to  a  late  posterity. 


THAT   A   MAN   MUST    NOT    LAUGH    AT    HIS    OWN   JEST 

The  severest  exaction  surely  ever  invented  npon  the  self-denial 
of  poor  human  nature  !     This  is  to  expect  a  gentleman  to  give 

25  a  treat  without  partaking  of  it ;  to  sit  esurient  at  his  own  table, 
and  commend  the  flavour  of  his  venison  upon  the  absurd 
strength  of  his  never  touching  it  himself.  On  the  contrary,  we 
love  to  see  a  wag  taste  his  own  joke  to  his  party ;  to  watch  a 
quirk  or  a  merry  conceit  flickering  upon  the  lips  some  seconds 

30  before  the  tongue  is  delivered  of  it.     If  it  be  good,  fresh,  and 


POPULAR    FALLACIES  307 

racy  —  begotten  of  the  occasion ;  if  he  that  utters  it  never 
thought  it  before,  he  is  naturally  the  first  to  be  tickled  with  it, 
and  any  suppression  of  such  complacence  we  hold  to  be  churlish 
and  insulting.  What  does  it  seem  to  imply  but  that  your  com- 
pany is  weak  or  foolish  enough  to  be  moved  by  an  image  or  a  5 
fancy,  that  shall  stir  you  not  at  all,  or  but  faintly?  This  is 
exactly  the  humour  of  the  fine  gentleman  in  Mandeville,  who, 
while  he  dazzles  his  guests  wdth  the  display  of  some  costly  toy, 
affects  himself  to  "  see  nothing  considerabfe  in  it." 

IV 

THAT    SUCH   A    ONE    SHO\VS    HIS    BREEDING.  —  THAT    IT    IS    EASY 
TO    PERCEIVE    HE    IS   NO    GENTLEMAN 

A  SPEECH  from  the  poorer  sort  of  people,  which  always  indi- 10 
Gates  that  the  party  vituperated  is  a  gentleman.  The  very  fact 
which  they  deny,  is  that  which  galls  and  exasperates  them  to 
use  this  language.  The  forbearance  with  which  it  is  usually 
received  is  a  proof  what  interpretation  the  bystander  sets  upon 
it.  Of  a  kin  to  this,  and  still  less  politic,  are  the  phrases  with  15 
which,  in   their   street  rhetoric,    they   ply   one    another   more 

grossly  :  — He  is  a  poor  creahire.  —  He  has  not  a  rag  to  cover 

etc. ;  though  this  last,  we  confess,  is  more  frequently  applied 
by  females  to  females.  They  do  not  perceive  that  the  satire 
glances  upon  themselves.  A  poor  man,  of  all  things  in  the  20 
world,  should  not  upbraid  an  antagonist  with  poverty.  Are 
there  no  other  topics  —  as,  to  tell  him  his  father  was  hanged 
—  his  sister,  etc.  — ,  without  exposing  a  secret  which  should 
be  kept  snug  between  them ;  and  doing  an  affront  to  the 
order  to  which  they  have  the  honour  equally  to  belong?  All  2;"i 
this  while  they  do  not  see  how  the  wealthier  man  stands  by  and 
laughs  in  his  sleeve  at  both. 

V 

THAT    THE    POOR    COPY    THE    VICES    OF    THE    RICH 

A  SMOOTH  text  to  the  latter  ;  and,  preached  from  the  pulpit, 
is  sure  of  a  docile  audience  from  the  pews  lined  with  satin.     It 


308  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

is  twice  sitting  upon  velvet  to  a  foolish  squire  to  be  told  that 
]ie — and  not  perverse  nature,  as  the  homilies  would  make  us 
imagine  —  is  the  true  cause  of  all  the  irregularities  in  his  parish. 
This  is  striking  at  the  root  of  free-will  indeed,  and  denying  the 
5  originality  of  sin  in  any  sense.'  But  men  are  not  such  implicit 
sheep  as  this  comes  to.  If  the  abstinence  from  evil  on  the 
part  of  the  upper  classes  is  to  derive  itself  from  no  higher  prin- 
ciple than  the  apprehension  of  setting  ill  patterns  to  the  lower, 
Me  beg  leave  to  discharge  them  from  all  squeamishness  on  that 

10  score  :  they  may  even  take  theu'  fill  of  pleasures,  where  they  can 
find  them.  The  Genius  of  Poverty,  hampered  and  straitened 
as  it  is,  is  not  so  barren  of  invention  but  it  can  trade  upon  the 
staple  of  its  own  vice,  without  drawing  upon  their  capital. 
The  poor  are  not  quite  such  servile  imitators  as  they  take  them 

1')  for.  Some  of  them  are  very  clever  artists  in  their  way.  Here 
and  there  we  find  an  original.  Who  taught  the  poor  to  steal, 
to  pilfer?  They  did  not  go  to  the  great  for  schoolmasters 
in  these  faculties  surely.  It  is  well  if  in  some  vices  they 
allow  us  to  be  —  no  copyists.     In  no  other  sense  is  it  true  that 

20  the  poor  copy  them,  than  as  servants  may  be  said  to  take  after 
their  masters  and  mistresses,  when  they  succeed  to  their  re- 
versionary cold  meats.  If  the  master,  from  indisposition,  or  some 
other  cause,  neglect  his  food,  the  servant  dines  notwithstanding. 
"  O,  but  (some  will  say)  the  force  of  example  is  great."     We 

25  knew  a  lady  who  was  so  scrupulous  on  this  head,  that  she  would 
put  up  with  the  calls  of  the  most  impertinent  visitor,  rather 
than  let  her  servant  say  she  was  not  at  home,  for  fear  of  teaching 
her  maid  to  tell  an  untruth ;  and  this  in  the  very  face  of  the 
fact,  which  she  knew  well  enough,  that  the  wench  was  one  of 

30  the  greatest  liars  upon  the  earth  without  teaching :  so  much  so, 
that  her  mistress  possibly  never  heard  two  words  of  consecutive 
truth  from  her  in  her  life.  But  nature  must  go  for  nothing  ; 
example  must  be  everything.  This  liar  in  grain,  who  never 
opened  her  mouth  without  a  lie,  must  be  guarded  against  a  re- 

.'50  mote  inference,  which  she  (pretty  casuist  I)  might  possibly 
draw  from  a  form  of  w^ords  —  literally  false,  but  essentially  de- 
ceiving no  one  —  that  under  some  circumstances  a  fib  might  not 
be  so  exceedingly  sinful  —  a  fiction,  too,  not  at  all  in  her  own  way, 
or  one  that  she  could  be  suspected  of  adopting,  for  few  servant* 

40  wenches  care  to  be  denied  to  visitors. 


POPULAR    FALLACIES  309 

This  word  examjAe  reminds  us  of  another  fine  word  which  is 
in  use  upon  these  occasions  —  encouragement.  "  People  in  our 
sphere  must  not  be  thought  to  give  encouragement  to  such  pro- 
ceedings." To  such  a  frantic  height  is  this  principle  capable 
of  being  carried,  that  we  have  known  individuals  who  have  5 
thought  it  within  the  scope  of  their  influence  to  sanction 
despair,  and  give  eclat  to  —  suicide.  A  domestic  in  the  family 
of  a  county  member  lately  deceased,  for  love,  or  some  unknown 
cause,  cut  his  throat,  but  not  successfully.  The  poor  fellow 
was  otherwise  much  loved  and  respected ;  and  great  interest  10 
was  used  in  his  behalf,  upon  his  recover}^,  that  he  might  be 
permitted  to  retain  his  place;  his  word  being  first  pledged,  not 
without  some  substantial  sponsors  to  promise  for  him,  that  the 
like  should  never  happen  again.  His  master  was  inclinable  to 
keep  him,  but  his  mistress  thought  otherwise;  and  John  in  the  15 
end  was  dismissed,  her  ladyship  declaring  that  she  "could not 
think  of  encouraging  any  such  doings  in  the  county." 


VI 

THAT  ENOUGH  IS  AS  GOOD  AS  A  FEAST 

Not  a  man,  woman,  or  child  in  ten  miles  round  Guild-hall, 
who  really  believes  this  saying.  The  inventor  of  it  did  not 
believe  it  himself.  It  was  made  in  revenge  by  somebody,  who  20 
was  disappointed  of  a  regale.  It  is  a  vile  cold-scrag-of-mutton 
sophism;  a  lie  palmed  upon  the  palate,  which  knows  better 
things.  If  nothing  else  could  be  said  for  a  feast,  this  is  sufii- 
cient,  that  from  the  superflux  there  is  usually  something  left 
for  the  next  day.  Morally  interpreted,  it  belongs  to  a  class  of  25 
proverbs  which  have  a  tendency  to  make  us  undervalue  monen. 
Of  this  cast  are  those  notable  observations,  that  money  is  not 
health;  riches  cannot  purchase  everything :  the  metaphor  which 
makes  gold  to  be  mere  muck,  with  the  morality  which  traces 
fine  clothing  to  the  sheep's  back,  and  denounces  pearl  as  theoO 
unhandsome  excretion  of  an  oyster.  Hence,  too,  the  phrase 
which  imputes  dirt  to  acres  — a  sophistry  so  barefaced,  that 
even  the  literal  sense  of  it  is  true  only  in  a  wet  season.  This, 
and  abundance  of  similar  sage  saws  assuming  to  inculcate  con- 


310  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELIA 

tent,  we  verily  believe  to  have  been  the  invention  of  some  cun- 
ning borrower,  who  had  designs  upon  the  purse  of  his  wealthier 
neighbour,  which  he  could  only  hope  to  carry  by  force  of  these 
verbal  jugglings.  Translate  any  one  of  these  sayings  out  of 
5  the  artful  metonymy  which  envelopes  it,  and  the  trick  is  ap- 
l^arent.  Goodly  legs  and  shoulders  of  mutton,  exhilarating 
cordials,  books!  pictures,  the  opportunities  of  seeing  foreign 
countries,  independence,  heart's  ease,  a  man's  own  time  to  him- 
self, are  not  muck — however  we  maybe  pleased  to  scandalise 
10  with  that  appellation  the  faithful  metal  that  provides  them  for 
us. 


OF     TWO    DISPUTANTS,    THE    WARMEST     IS     GENERALLY   IN    THE 
WRONG 

Our  experience  would  lead  us  to  quite  an  opposite  conclu- 
sion. Temper,  indeed,  is  no  test  of  truth ;  but  warmth  and 
earnestness  are  a  proof  at  least  of  a  man's  own  conviction  of  tlie 

15  rectitude  of  that  which  he  maintains.  Coolness  is  as  often  the 
result  of  an  unprincipled  indifference  to  truth  or  falsehood,  as 
of  a  sober  confidence  in  a  man's  own  side  in  a  dispute.  Xothing 
is  more  insulting  sometimes  than  the  appearance  of  this  philo- 
sophic temper.     There  is  little  Titubus,  the  stammering  law- 

20  stationer  in  Lincoln's  Inn  — we  have  seldom  known  this  shrewd 
little  fellow  engaged  in  an  argument  where  we  were  not  convinced 
he  had  the  best  of  it,  if  his  tongue  would  but  fairly  have  sec- 
onded him.  When  he  has  been  spluttering  excellent  broken 
sense  for  an  hour  together,  writhing  and  labouring  to  be  de- 

25  livered  of  the  point  of  dispute  —  the  very  gist  of  the  contro- 
versy knocking  at  his  teeth,  which  like  some  obstinate 
iron-grating  still  obstructed  its  deliverance  —  his  puny  frame 
convulsed,  and  face  reddening  all  over  at  an  unfairness  in  the 
logic  which  he  wanted  articulation  to  expose,  it  has  moved  our 

30  gall  to  see  a  smooth  portly  fellow  of  an  adversary,  that  cared 
not  a  button  for  the  merits  of  the  question,  by  merely  laying 
his  hand  upon  the  head  of  the  stationer,  and  desiring  him  to  be 
caha  (your  tall  disputants  have  always  the  advantage),  with  a 


I 


POPULAR    FALLACIES  311 

provoking  sneer  carry  the  argument  clean  from  him  in  the 
opinion  of  all  the  bystanders,  who  have  gone  away  clearly  con- 
vinced that  Titubus  must  have  been  in  the  wrong,  because  he 

w^as  in  a  passion  ;  and  that  Mr. ,  meaning  his  opponent,  is 

one  of  the  fairest  and  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  most  dispas-  5 
sionate  arguers  breathing. 

VIII 

THAT    VERBAL    ALLUSIONS    ARE    NOT    WIT,    BECAUSE    THEY 
WILL   NOT    BEAR   A   TRANSLATION 

The  same  might  be  said  of  the  wittiest  local  allusions.  A 
custom  is  sometimes  as  difficult  to  explain  to  a  foreigner  as  a 
pun.  What  would  become  of  a  great  part  of  the  wit  of  the 
last  age,  if  it  were  tried  by  this  test  ?  How^  would  certain  10 
topics,  as  aldermanity,  cuckoldry,  have  sounded  to  a  Terentian 
auditory,  though  Terence  himself  had  been  alive  to  translate 
them?  Senator  urb anus  with.  Curruca  to  boot  for  a  synonym, 
would  but  faintly  have  done  the  business.  "Words,  involving 
notions,  are  hard  enough  to  render ;  it  is  too  much  to  expect  us  15 
to  translate  a  sound,  and  give  an  elegant  version  to  a  jingle. 
The  Virgilian  harmony  is  not  translatable,  but  by  substituting 
harmonious  sounds  in  another  language  for  it.  To  Latinise  a 
pun,  we  must  seek  a  pun  in  Latin  that  will  answ^er  to  it ;  as,  to 
give  an  idea  of  the  double  endings  in  Hubibras,°  we  must  have  20 
recourse  to  a  similar  practice  in  the  old  monkish  doggerel. 
Dennis,  the  fiercest  oppugner  of  puns  in  ancient  or  modern 
times,  professes  himself  highly  tickled  with  the  "a  stick," 
chiming  to  "  ecclesiastic."  Yet  what  is  this  but  a  species  of  pun, 
a  verbal  consonance  ?  25 

IX 
THAT    THE    WORST    PUNS    ARE    THE    BEST 

If  by  worst  be  only  meant  the  most  far-fetched  and  start- 
ling, we  agree  to  it.  A  pun  is  not  bound  by  the  laws  which 
limit  nicer  wit.  It  is  a  pistol  let  off  at  the  ear;  not  a  feather 
to  tickle  the  intellect.    It  is  an  antic  which  does  not  stand  upon 


312  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

manners,  but  comes  bounding  into  the  presence,  and  does  not 
show  the  less  comic  for  being  dragged  in  sometimes  by  the 
head  and  shoulders.  AVhat  though  it  limp  a  little,  or  prove 
defective  in  one  leg  —  all  the  better.  A  pun  may  easily  be  too 
5  curious  and  artificial.  Who  has  not  at  one  time  or  other  been 
at  a  party  of  professors  (himself  perhaps  an  old  offender  in  that 
line),  where,  after  ringing  a  round  of  the  most  ingenious  con- 
ceits, every  man  contributing  his  shot,  and  some  there  the 
most  expert  shooters  of  the  day;  after  making  a  poor   word 

10  run  the  gauntlet  till  it  is  ready  to  drop  ;  after  hunting  and 
winding  it  through  all  the  possible  ambages  of  similar  sounds  ; 
after  squeezing,  and  hauling,  and  tugging  at  it,  till  the  very 
milk  of  it  will  not  yield  a  drop  further,  —  suddenly  some 
obscure,  unthought-of  fellow  in  a  corner,  who  was  never  'prentice 

15  to  the  trade,  whom  the  company  for  very  pity  passed  over,  as 
Ave  do  by  a  known  poor  man  when  a  money-subscription  is 
going  round,  no  one  calling  upon  him  for  his  quota  —  has  all  at 
once  come  out  with  something  so  whimsical,  yet  so  pertinent ; 
so  brazen  in  its  pretensions,  yet  so  impossible  to  be  denied  ; 

20  so  exquisitely  good,  and  so  deplorably  bad,  at  the  same  time, 
—  that  it  has  proved  a  Robin  Hood's  shot ;  anything  ulterior 
to  that  is  despaired  of ;  and  the  party  breaks  up,  unanimously 
voting  it  to  be  the  very  worst  (that  is,  best)  pun  of  the  even- 
ing.    This  S|)ecies  of  wit  is  the  better  for  not  being  perfect  in 

25  all  its  parts.  What  it  gains  in  completeness,  it  loses  in  natural- 
ness. The  more  exactly  it  satisfies  the  critical,  the  less  hold  it 
has  upon  some  other  faculties.  The  puns  which  are  most 
entertaining  are  those  which  will  least  bear  an  analysis.  Of 
this  kind  is  the  following,  recorded,  with  a  sort  of  stigma,  in 

30  one  of  Swift's  Miscellanies. 

An  Oxford  scholar,  meeting   a  porter  who  was  carrying   a 
hare  through  the  streets,  accosts  him  with  this  extraordinary 
question  :  "  Prithee,  friend,  is  that  thy  own  hair  or  a  wig?  " 
There  is  no  excusing  this,  and  no  resisting  it.     A  man  might 

35  blur  ten  sides  of  paper  in  attempting  a  defence  of  it  against  a 
critic  who  should  be  laughter-proof.  The  quibble  in  itself  is 
not  considerable.  It  is  only  a  new  turn  given,  by  a  little  false 
pronunciation,  to  a  very  common  though  not  very  courteous 
inquiry.     Put  by  one  gentleman  to  another  at  a  dinner-party, 


POPULAR    FALLACIES  313 

it  would  have  been  vapid  ;  to  the  mistress  of  the  house,  it 
would  have  shown  much  less  wit  than  rudeness.  We  must  take 
in  the  totality  of  time,  place,  and  person  ;  the  pert  look  of  the 
inquiring  scholar,  the  desponding  looks  of  the  puzzled  porter : 
the  one  stopping  at  leisure,  the  other  hurrying  on  with  his  5 
burthen  ;  the  innocent  though  rather  abrupt  tendency  of  the 
first  member  of  the  question,  with  the  utter  and  inextricable 
irrelevancy  of  the  second;  the  place  —  a  public  street,  not 
favourable  to  frivolous  investigations ;  the  affrontive  quality  of 
the  primitive  inquiry  (the  common  question)  invidiously  trans- 10 
ferred  to  the  derivative  (the  new  turn  given  to  it)  in  the 
implied  satire  ;  namely,  that  few  of  that  tribe  are  expected  to 
eat  of  the  good  things  which  they  carry,  they  being  in  most 
countries  considered  rather  as  the  temporary  trustees  than 
owners  of  such  dainties,  —  which  the  fellow  was  beginning  to  15 
understand  ;  but  then  the  wig  again  comes  in,  and  he  can  make 
nothing  of  it :  all  put  together  constitute  a  picture :  Hogarth"^ 
could  have  made  it  intelligible  on  canvas. 

Yet  nine  out  of  ten  critics  will  pronounce  this  a  very  bad 
pun,  because  of  the  defectiveness  in  the  concluding  member,  20 
which  is  its  very   beauty,  and  constitutes  the  surprise.      The 
same  persons  shall  cry  up  for  admirable  'che  cold  quibble  from 
Virgil  about  the  broken  Cremona ;  ^  because  it  is  made  out  in 
all  its  parts,  and  leaves  nothing  to  the  imagination.     We  ven- 
ture to  call  it  cold ;  because,  of  thousands  who  have  admired  it,  25 
it  would  be  difficult  to  find  one  who  has  heartily  chuckled  at  it. 
As  appealing  to  the  judgment  merely  (setting  the  risible  faculty 
aside),  we  must  pronounce  it  a  monument  of  curious  felicity. 
But  as  some  stories  are  said  to  be  too  good  to  be  true,  it  may 
with  equal  truth  be  asserted  of  this  bi-verbal  allusion,  that  it  is  30 
too  good  to  be  natural.     One  cannot  help  suspecting  that  the 
incident  was  invented   to  fit  the  line.     It  would  have  been 
better  had  it  been  less  perfect.    Like  some  Virgilian  hemistichs, 
it  has  suffered  by  filling  up.    The  nimium  Vicina  was  enough  in 
conscience ;  the  Cremonce  afterwards  loads  it.     It  is,  in  fact,  a  35 
double  pun ;  and  we  have  always  observed  that  a  superfoetation 
in  this  sort  of  wit  is  dangerous.     When  a  man  has  said  a  good 

1  Swift. 


314  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

thing,  it  is  seldom  politic  to  follow  it  up.  We  do  not  care  to 
be  cheated  a  second  time  ;  or,  perhaps,  the  mind  of  man  (with 
reverence  be  it  spoken)  is  not  capacious  enough  to  lodge  two 
puns  at  a  time.  The  impression,  to  be  forcible,  must  be  simul- 
5  taneous  and  undivided. 


THAT    HANDSOME    IS    THAT    HANDSOME    DOES 

Those  who   use  this    proverb   can   never  have    seen   Mrs. 
Conrady. 

The  soul,  if  we  may  believe  Plotinus,  is  a  ray  from  the  ce- 
lestial beauty.     As  she  partakes  more  or  less  of  this  heavenly 
10  light,  she  informs.°  with  corresponding  characters,  the  fleshly 
tenement  which  she  chooses,  and  frames  to  herself  a  suitable 
mansion. 

All  which  only  proves  that  the  soul  of  Mrs.  Conrady,  in  her 
pre-existent  state,  was  no  great  judge  of  architecture. 
15      To  the  same  effect,  in  a  Hymn  in  honour  of  Beauty,  divine 
S'pensev platonising  sings: 


Every  spirit  as  it  is  more  pure, 


And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenly  light, 
So  it  the  fairer  hody  doth  procure 
20  To  hahit  in,  and  it  more  fairly  dight° 

"With  cheerful  grace  and  amiahle  sight. 
For  of  the  souf  the  hody  form  doth  take : 
For  soul  is  form,  and  dbth  the  hody  make. 

But  Spenser,  it  is  clear,  never  saw  Mrs.  Conrady. 
25      These  poets,  we  find,  are  no  safe  guides  in  philosophy ;  for 
here,  in  his  very  next  stanza  but  one,  is  a  saving  clause,  which 
throws  us  all  out  again,   and  leaves  us  as  much  to  seek  as 
ever : 

Yet  oft  it  falls,  that  many  a  gentle  mind 
30      -  Dwells  in  deformed  tabernacle  drown'd, 

Either  by  chance,  against  the  course  of  kind,° 
Or  through  unaptness  in  the  substance  found, 
"Which  it  assumed  of  some  stubboi*n  ground, 
That  will  not  yield  unto  her  form's  direction, 
35  But  is  perforui'd  with  some  foul  imperfection. 


THAT  HANDSOME  IS    THAT  HANDSOME  DOES      315 

From  which  it  would  follow,  that  Spenser  had  seen  somebody- 
like  Mrs.  Conrady. 

The  spirit  of    this  good  lady — her   previous   anima  —  must 
have  stumbled  upon  one  of  these  untoward  tabernacles  which 
he   speaks   of.     A  more   rebellious   commodity   of  clay   for   a  5 
ground,  as  the  poet  calls  it,  no  gentle  mind  —  and  sure  hers  is 
one  of  the  gentlest — ever  had  to  deal  with. 

Pondering  upon  her  inexplicable  visage  —  inexplicable,  we 
mean,  but  by  this  modification  of  the  theory  — we  have  come  to 
a  conclusion  that,  if  one  must  be  plain,  it  is  better  to  be  plain  10 
all  over,  than  amidst  a  tolerable  residue  of  features  to  hang  out 
one  that  shall  be  exceptionable.  Xo  one  can  say  of  Mrs.  Con- 
radj^'s  countenance  that  it  would  be  better  if  she  had  but  a  nose. 
It  is  impossible  to  pull  her  to  pieces  in  this  manner.  We  have 
seen  the  most  malicious  beauties  of  her  own  sex  baffled  in  the  15 
attempt  at  a  selection.  The  tout-ensemble  defies  particularizing. 
It  is  too  complete  —  too  consistent,  as  we  may  say  —  to  admit 
of  these  invidious  reservations.  It  is  not  as  if  some  Apelles 
had  picked  out  here  a  lip  —  and  there  a  chin  —  out  of  the  col- 
lected ugliness  of  Greece,  to  frame  a  model  by.  It  is  a  sym-  20 
metrical  whole.  We  challenge  the  minutest  connoisseur  to 
cavil  at  any  part  or  parcel  of  the  countenance  in  question  ;  to 
say  that  this,  or  that,  is  improperly  placed.  We  are  convinced 
that  true  ugliness,  no  less  than  is  affirmed  of  true  beauty,  is  the 
result  of  harmony.  Like  that  too  it  reigns  without  a  com- 25 
petitor.  No  one  ever  saw  Mrs.  Conrady  without  pronouncing 
her  to  be  the  plainest  woman  that  he  ever  met  with  in_  the 
course  of  his  life.  The  first  time  that  you  are  indulged  with  a 
sight  of  her  face,  is  an  era  in  your  existence  ever  after.  You 
are  glad  to  have  seen  it  —  like  Stonehenge.  No  one  can  pre- 30 
tend  to  forget  it.  No  one  ever  apologised  to  her  for  meeting 
her  in  the  street  on  such  a  day  and  not  knowing  her  :  the  pre- 
text would  be  too  bare.  Nobody  can  mistake  her  for  another. 
Nobody  can  say  of  her,  "  I  think  I  have  seen  that  face  some- 
where, but  I  cannot  call  to  mind  where."  You  must  remember  35 
that  in  such  a  parlour  it  first  struck  you  —  like  a  bust.  You 
wondered  where  the  owner  of  the  house  had  picked  it  up.  You 
wondered  more  when  it  began  to  move  its  lips  —  so  mildly  too  ! 
No  one  ever  thought  of  asking  her  to  sit  for    her  picture. 


316  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

Lockets  are  for  remembrance ;  and  it  would  be  clearly  superflu- 
ous  to  hang  an  image  at  your  heart,  which,  once  seen,  can  never 
be  out  of  it.  It  is  not  a  mean  face  either ;  its  entire  originality 
precludes  that.  Neither  Ls  it  of  that  order  of  plain  faces 
5  which  improve  upon  acquaintance.  Some  very  good  but  ordi- 
nary people,  by  an  unwearied  perseverance  in  good  offices,  put  a 
cheat  upon  our  eyes;  juggle  our  senses  out  of  their  natural  im- 
pressions ;  and  set  us  upon  discovering  good  indications  in  a 
countenance,  which  at  first  sight  promised  nothing  less.     We 

10  detect  gentleness,  which  had  escaped  us,  lurking  about  an 
under  lip.  But  when  Mrs.  Conrady  has  done  you  a  service,  her 
face  remains  the  same ;  when  she  has  done  you  a  thousand, 
and  you  know  that  she  is  ready  to  double  the  number,  still  it  is 
that  individual  face.     Neither  can  you  say  of  it,  that  it  would 

15  be  a  good  face  if  it  were  not  marked  by  the  small-pox  —  a  com- 
pliment which  is  alwaj^s  more  admissive  than  excusatory — for 
either  Mrs.  Conrady  never  had  the  small-pox  ;  or,  as  we  say, 
took  it  kindly.  No,  it  stands  upon  its  own  merits  fairly. 
There  it  is.     It  is  her  mark,  her  token;   that  which   she   is 

20  known  by. 

XI 

THAT   WE   MUST   NOT   LOOK   A   GIFT   HORSE   IN 
THE   MOUTH  *. 

Nor  a  lady's  age  in  the  parish  register.  We  hope  we  have 
more  delicacy  than  to  do  either ;  but  some  faces  spare  us  the 
trouble  of  these  dental  iuquii'ies.  And  what  if  the  beast,  which 
my  friend  would  force  upon  my  acceptance,  prove,  upon  the 

25  face  of  it,  a  sorry  Rosinante,  a  lean,  ill-favoured  jade,  whom 
no  gentleman  could  think  of  setting  up  in  his  stables?  Must  I, 
rather  than  not  be  obliged  to  my  friend,  make  her  a  compan- 
ion to  Eclipse  or  Lightfoot?  A  horse-giver,  no  more  than  a 
horse -seller,  has  a  right  to  palm  his  spavined  article  upon  us 

30  for  good  ware.  An  equivalent  is  expected  in  either  case  ;  and, 
with  my  own  goodwill,  I  would  no  more  be  cheated  out  of  my 
thanks  than  out  of  my  money.  Some  people  have  a  knack  of 
putting  upon  you  gifts  of  no  real  value,  to  engage  you  to 
substantial  gratitude.      We   thank   them  for  nothing.      Our 


MUST  NOT  LOOK  A   GIFT  HORSE  IN  THE  MOUTH   SIT 

friend  Mitis  carries  this  humour  of  never  refusing  a  present,  to 
the  very  point  of  absurdity  —  if  it  were  possible  to  couple  the 
ridiculous  with  so  much  mistaken  delicacy  and  real  good- 
nature. 'Not  an  apartment  in  his  fine  house  (and  he  has  a 
true  taste  in  household  decorations),  but  is  stuffed  up  with  5 
some  preposterous  print  or  mirror  —  the  worst  adapted  to  his 
panels  that  may  be  —  the  presents  of  his  friends  that  know  his 
weakness ;  while  his  noble  Vandykes  are  displaced  to  make 
room  for  a  set  of  daubs,  the  work  of  some  wretched  artist  of 
his  acquaintance,  who,  having  had  them  returned  upon  his  10 
hands  for  bad  likenesses,  finds  his  account  in  bestowing  them 
here  gratis.  The  good  creature  has  not  the  heart  to  mortify 
the  painter  at  the  expense  of  an  honest  refusal.  It  is  pleasant 
(if  it  did  not  vex  one  at  the  same  time)  to  see  him  sitting  in 
his  dining  parlour,  surrounded  with  obscure  aunts  and  cousins  15 
to  God  knows  whom,  while  the  true  Lady  Marys  and  Lady 
Bettys  of  his  own  honourable  family,  in  favour  to  these  adopted 
frights,  are  consigned  to  the  staircase  and  the  lumber-room.  In 
like  manner,  his  goodly  shelves  are  one  by  one  stripped  of  his 
favourite  old  authors,  to  give  place  to  a  collection  of  presen-20 
tatioii  copies  —  the  flour  and  bran  of  modern  poet>-y.  A  pre- 
sentation copy,  Reader  —  if  haply  you  are  yet  innocent  of 
such  favours  —  is  a  copy  of  a  book  which  does  not  sell,  sent  you 
by  the  author,  with  his  foolish  autograph  at  the  beginning  of 
it;  for  which,  if  a  stranger,  he  only  demands  your  friendship  ;  25 
if  a  brother  author,  he  expects  from  you  a  book  of  yours  which 
does  sell,  in  return.  We  can  speak  to  experience,  having  by  us 
a  tolerable  assortment  of  these  gift-horses.  Xot  to  ride  a  meta- 
phor to  death  —  we  are  willing  to  acknowledge  that  in  some 
gifts  there  is  sense.  A  duplicate  out  of  a  friend's  library  30 
(where  he  has  more  than  one  copy  of  a  rare  author)  is  intel- 
ligible. There  are  favours,  short  ""of  the  pecuniary  —  a  thing 
not  fit  to  be  hinted  at  among  gentlemen  —  which  confer  as 
much  grace  upon  the  acceptor  as  the  offerer :  the  kind,  we 
confess,  which  is  most  to  our  palate,  is  of  those  little  concili-  STt 
atory  missives,  which  for  their  vehicle  generally  choose  a 
hamper  —  little  odd  presents  of  game,  fruit,  perhaps  wine  — 
though  it  is  essential  to  the  delicacy  of  the  latter,  that  it  be 
home-made.     AVe  love  to  have  our  friend  in  the  country  sitting 


318  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELIA 

thus  at  our  table  by  proxy  °  ;  to  apprehend  his  presence  (though 
a  hundred  miles  may  be  between  us)  by  a  turkey,  whose  goodly 
aspect  reflects  to  us  his  "plump  corpusculum  ;  "  to  taste  him  in 
grouse  or  woodcock ;  to  feel  him  gliding  down  in  the  toast  pecu- 
5  liar  to  the  latter ;  to  concorporate  him  in  a  slice  of  Canterbury 
brawn.  This  is  indeed  to  Imve  him  within  ourselves  ;  to  know 
him  intimately  :  such  participation  is  methinks  unitive,  as  the 
old  theologians  phrase  it.  For  these  considerations  we  shotdd 
be  sorry  if  certain  restrictive  regulations,  which  are  thought  to 

10  bear  hard  upon  the  peasantry  of  this  country,  were  entirely 
done  away  with.  A  hare,  as  the  law  now  stands,  makes  many 
friends.  Cains  conciliates  Titius  (knowing  his  gout)  with  a 
leash  of  partridges.  Titius  (suspecting  his  partiality  for  them) 
passes  them  to  Lucius ;  who,  in  his  turn,  preferring  his  friend's 

15  relish  to  his  own,  makes  them  over  to  Marcius  ;  till  in  their 
ever-widening  progress,  and  round  of  unconscious  circummi- 
gration,  they  distribute  the  seeds  of  harmony  over  half  a 
parish.  We  are  well-disposed  to  this  kind  of  sensible  remem- 
brances ;  and  are  the  less  apt  to  be  taken  by  those  little  airy 

20  tokens — impalpable  to  the  palate — which,  under  the  names  of 
rings,  lockets,  keepsakes,  amuse  some  people's  fancy  mightily. 
"We  could  never  away  with  these  indigestible  trifles.  They  are 
the  very  kickshaws  and  foppery  of  friendship. 


XII 

THAT  HOME  IS  HOME  THOUGH  IT  IS  NEVER 
SO  HOMELY 

Homes  there  are,  we  are  sure,  that  are  no  homes  :  the  home 
25  of  the  very  poor  man,  and  another  which  we  shall  speak  to 
presently.  Crowded  places  of  cheap  entertainment,  and  the 
benches  of  alehouses,  if  they  could  speak,  might  bear  mournful 
testimony  to  the  first.  To  them  the  very  poor  man  resorts  for 
an  image  of  the  home,  which  he  cannot  find  at  home.  For  a 
30  starved  grate,  and  a  scanty  firing,  that  is  not  enough  to  keep 
alive  the  natural  heat  in  the  fingers  of  so  many  shivering  chil- 
dren with  their  mother,  he  finds  in  the  depths  of  winter  always 


HOME  IS  HOME    THOUGH  NEVER   SO   HOMELY     319 

a  blazing  hearth,  and  a  hob  to  warm  his  pittance  of  beer  by. 
Instead  of  the  clamours  of  a  wife,  made  gaunt  by  famishing,  he 
meets  with  a  cheerful  attendance  beyond  the  merits  of  the 
trifle  which  he  can  afford  to  spend.  He  has  companions  which 
his  home  denies  him,  for  the  very  poor  man  has  no  visitors.  5 
He  can  look  into  the  goings  on  of  the  world,  and  speak  a  little 
to  politics.  At  home  there  are  no  politics  stirring,  but  the 
domestic.  All  interests,  real  or  imaginary,  all  topics  that 
should  expand  the  mind  of  man,  and  connect  him  to  a  sym- 
pathy with  general  existence,  are  crushed  in  the  absorbing  con-ia 
sideration  of  food  to  be  obtained  for  the  family.  Beyond  the 
price  of  bread,  news  is  senseless  and  impertinent.  At  home 
there  is  no  larder.  Here  there  is  at  least  a  show  of  plenty ; 
and  while  he  cooks  his  lean  scrap  of  butcher's  meat  before  the 
common  bars,  or  munches  his  humbler  cold  viands,  his  relish- 15 
ing  bread  and  cheese  with  an  onion,  in  a  corner,  where  no  one 
reflects  upon  his  poverty,  he  has  sight  of  the  substantial  joint 
providing  for  the  landlord  and  his  family.  He  takes  an  inter- 
est in  the  dressing  of  it ;  and  while  he  assists  in  removing  the 
trivet  from  the  fire,  he  feels  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  beef  20 
and  cabbage,  which  he  was  beginning  to  forget  at  home.  All 
this  while  he  deserts  his  wife  and  children.  But  what  wife, 
and  what  children?  Prosperous  men,  who  object  to  this  deser- 
tion, image  to  themselves  some  clean  contented  family  like  that 
which  they  go  home  to.  But  look  at  the  countenance  of  the  25 
poor  wives  who  follow  and  persecute  their  goodman  to  the  door 
of  the  public-house,  which  he  is  about  to  enter,  when  something 
like  shame  would  restrain  him,  if  stronger  misery  did  not 
induce  him  to  pass  the  threshold.  That  face,  ground  by  want, 
in  which  every  cheerful,  every  conversable  lineament  has  been  30 
long  effaced  by  misery,  —  is  that  a  face  to  stay  at  home  with  ?  is 
it  more  a  woman,  or  a  wild  cat  ?  alas  !  it  is  the  face  of  the  wife 
of  his  youth,  that  once  siniled  upon  him.  It  can  smile  no 
longer.  What  comforts  can  it  share?  what  burthens  can  it 
lighten?  Oh,  'tis  a  fine  thing  to  talk  of  the  humble  meal  35 
shared  together !  But  what  if  there  be  no  bread  in  the  cup- 
board? The  innocent  prattle  of  his  children  takes  out  the 
sting  of  a  man's  poverty.  But  the  children  of  the  very  poor 
do  not  prattle.    It  is  none  of  the  least  frightful  features  in  that 


320  THE   ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

condition,  that  there  is  no  childishness  in  its  dwellings.  Poor 
people,  said  a  sensible  old  nurse  to  us  once,  do  not  bring  up 
their  children  ;  they  drag  them  up. 

The  little  careless  darling  of  the  •wealthier  nursery,  in  their 
5  hovel  is  transformed  betimes  into  a  premature  reflecting  person. 
No  one  has  time  to  dandle  it,  no  one  thinks  it  worth  while  to 
coax  it,  to  soothe  it,  to  toss  it  up  and  down,  to  humour  it. 
There  is  none  to  kiss  away  its  tears.  If  it  cries,  it  can  only  be 
beaten.      It  has  been  x^rettily  said,  that  "  a  babe  is  fed  with 

10  milk  and  praise."  But  the  aliment  of  this  poor  babe  was  thin, 
unnoLirishing ;  the  return  to  its  little  baby  tricks,  and  efforts 
to  engage  attention,  bitter  ceaseless  objurgation.  It  never  had 
a  toy,  or  knew  what  a  coral  meant.  It  grew  up  without  the 
lullaby  of  nurses,  it  was  a  stranger  to  the  patient  fondle,  the 

15  hushing  caress,  the  attracting  novelty,  the  costlier  plaything,  or 
the  cheaper  off-hand  contrivance  to  divert  the  child  ;  the  prattled 
nonsense  (best  sense  to  it),  the  wise  impertinences,  the  whole- 
some lies,  the  apt  story  interposed,  that  puts  a  stop  to  present 
sufferings,  and  awakens  the  passions  of  young  wonder.     It  was 

20  never  sung  to  —  no  one  ever  told  to  it  a  tale  of  the  nursery.  It 
was  dragged  up,  to  live  or  to  die  as  it  happened.  It  had  no  young 
dreams.  It  broke  at  once  into  the  iron  realities  of  life.  A 
child  exists  not  for  the  very  poor  as  any  object  of  dalliance;  it 
is  only  another  mouth  to  be  fed,  a  pair  of  little  hands  to  be 

25  betimes  inured  to  labour.  It  is  the  rival,  till  it  can  be  the 
co-operator,  for  food  with  the  parent.  It  is  never  his  mirth,  his 
diversion,  his  solace;  it  never  makes  him  young  again,  with 
recalling  his  young  times.  The  children  of  the  very  poor  have 
no  young  times.     It  makes  the  very  heart  to  bleed  to  overhear 

30  the  casual  street-talk  between  a  poor  woman  and  her  little  girl, 
a  w^oman  of  the  better  sort  of  poor,  in  a  condition  rather  above 
the  squalid  beings  which  we  have  been  contemplating.  It  is 
not  of  toj^s,  of  nursery  books,  of  summer  holidays  (fitting  that 
age)  ;  of  the  promised  sight,  or  play ;  of  praised  sufficiency  at 

35  school.  It  is  of  mangling  and  clear-starching,  of  the  price  of 
coals,  or  of  potatoes.  The  questions  of  the  child,  that  should 
be  the  very  outpourings  of  curiosity  in  idleness,  are  marked 
with  forecast  and  melancholy  providence.  It  has  come  to  be 
a  woman,  before  it  was  a  child.     It  has  learned  to  ^o  to  mar- 


HOME  IS  HOME    THOUGH  NEVER   SO   HOMELY     321 

ket ;  it  chaffers,  it  haggles,  it  envies,  it  murmnrs ;  it  is  knowing, 
acute,  sharpened ;  it  never  prattles.  Had  we  not  reason  to  say 
that  the  home  of  the  very  poor  is  no  home  ? 

There  is  yet  another  home,  which  we  are  constrained  to  deny 
to  be  one.  It  has  a  larder,  which  the  home  of  the  poor  man  5 
wants ;  its  fireside  conveniences,  of  which  the  poor  dream 
not.  But  with  all  this,  it  is  no  home.  It  is  —  the  house  of 
the  man  that  is  infested  Avith  many  visitors.  May  we  be 
branded  for  the  veriest  churl,  if  we  deny  our  heart  to  the  many 
noble-hearted  friends  that  at  times  exchange  their  dwelling  for  10 
our  poor  roof  !  It  is  not  of  guests  that  we  complain,  but  of 
endless,  purposeless  visitants;  droppers-in,  as  they  are  called. 
We  sometimes  wonder  from  what  sky  they  fall.  It  is  the  very 
error  of  the  position  of  our  lodging ;  its  horoscopy  was  ill  cal- 
culated, being  just  situate  in  a  medium  —  a  plaguy  suburban  15 
mid-space — fitted  to  catch  idlers  from  town  or  country.  We 
are  older  than  we  were,  and  age  is  easily  put  out  of  its  way. 
AVe  have  fewer  sands  in  our  glass  to  reckon  upon,  and  we 
cannot  brook"  to  see  them  drop  in  endlessly  succeeding  imperti- 
nences. At  our  time  of  life,  to  be  alone  sometimes  is  as  need-  20 
ful  as  sleep.  It  is  the  refreshing  sleep  of  the  day.  The 
growing  infirmities  of  age  manifest  themselves  in  nothing  more 
strongly  than  in  an  inveterate  dislike  of  interruption.  The  thing 
which  we  are  doing,  we  wish  to  be  permitted  to  do.  We  haA^e 
neither  much  knowledge  nor  devices  ;  but  there  are  fewer  in  the  25 
place  to  which  we  hasten.  We  are  not  willingly  put  out  of  our 
way,  even  at  a  game  of  nine-pins.  While  youth  was,  we  had 
vast  reversions  in  time  future  ;  we  are  reduced  to  a  present 
pittance,  and  obliged  to  economize  in  that  article.  We  bleed 
away  our  moments  now  as  hardly  as  our  ducats.  We  cannot  30 
bear  to  have  our  thin  wardrobe  eaten  and  fretted  into  by 
moths.  We  are  willing  to  barter  our  good  time  with  a  friend, 
who  gives  us  in  exchange  his  own.  Herein  is  the  distinction 
between  the  genuine  guest  and  the  visitant.  This  latter  takes 
your  good  time,  and  gives  you  his  bad  in  exchange.  The  guest  35 
is  domestic  to  vou  as  vour  good  cat,  or  household  bird ;  the  visitant 
is  vour  fly,  that  flaps  in  at  your  window  and  out  again,  leaving 
nothing  but  a  sense  of  disturbance,  and  victuals  spoiled.  IMie 
inferior  functions  of  life  begin  to  move  heavily.     We  cannot 


322  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

concoct  our  food  Tvith  interruptions.  Our  chief  meal,  to  be 
nutritive,  must  be  solitary.  'With  difficulty  we  can  eat  before 
a  guest ;  and  never  understood  what  the  relish  of  public  feast- 
ing meant.  Meats  have  no  sapor,  nor  digestion  fair  play,  in  a 
5 ciowd.  The  unexpected  coming  in  of  a  visitant  stops  the 
machine.  There  is  a  punctual  generation  who  time  their  calls 
to  the  precise  commencement  of  your  dining-hour  —  not  to  eat 
—  but  to  see  you  eat.  Our  knife  and  fork  drop  instinctively, 
and  we  feel  that  we  have  swallowed  our  latest  morsel.     Others 

10  again  show  their  genius,  as  w^e  have  said,  in  knocking  the 
moment  you  have  just  sat  down  to  a  book.  They  have  a  pecu- 
liar compassionate  sneer,  with  which  they  "  hope  that  they  do 
not  interrupt  your  studies."  Though  they  flutter  off  the  next 
moment,  to   carry  their   impertinences  to  the  nearest  student 

15  that  they  can  call  their  friend,  the  tone  of  the  book  is  spoiled ;  we 
shut  the  leaves,  and  with  Dante's°  lovers,  read  no  more  that 
day.  It  were  well  if  the  effect  of  intrusion  were  simply  coex- 
tensive with  its  presence  ;  but  it  mars  all  the  good  hours  after- 
wards.   These  scratches  in  appearance  leave  an  orifice  that  closes 

20  not  hastily.  "  It  is  a  prostitution  of  the  bravery  of  friendship,' 
says  worthy  Bishop  Taylor,  "  to  spend  it  upon  impertinent 
people,  who  are,  it  may  be,  loads  to  their  families,  but  can  never 
ease  my  loads."  This  is  the  secret  of  their  gaddings,  their 
visits,  and  morning  calls.     They  too  have   homes,  which  are 

25  — uo  homes. 


THAT  YOU  MUST  LOVE  ME  AND  LOVE  MY  DOG 

"Good  sir,  or  madam — as  it  may  be  —  we  most  willingly 
embrace  the  offer  of  your  friendship.  We  have  long  known 
your  excellent  qualities.  We  have  wished  to  have  you  nearer 
to  us ;  to  hold  you  within  the  very  innermost  fold  of  our  heart. 
30  We  can  have  no  reserve  towards  a  person  of  your  open  and 
noble  nature.  The  frankness  of  your  honour  suits  us  exactly. 
We  have  been  long  looking  for  such  a  friend.  Quick  —  let  i\s 
disburthen  our  troubles  into  each  other's  bosom  —  let  us  make 
our  single  joys  shine  b}  reduplication —  But  yap,  yap,  yap  .'  — 


YOU  MUST  LOVE  ME  AND   LOVE  31 Y  BOG     323 

what  is  this  confounded  cur  ?  he  has  fastened  his  tooth,  which 
is  none  of  the  bhmtest,  just  in  the  fleshy  part  of  my  leg." 

"  It  is  my  dog,  sir.  You  must  love  him  for  my  'sake.  Here, 
Test  — Test  — Test!" 

*'  But  he  has  bitten  me."  .  5 

"  Ay,  that  lie  is  apt  to  do,  till  you  are  better  acquainted  with 
him.     I  have  had  him  three  years.     He  never  bites  me." 

Yap,  yap,  yap  ! —  "  He  is  at  it  again." 

"  Oh,  sir,  you  must  not  kick  him.     He  does  not  like  to  be 
kicked.     I  expect  my  dog  to  be  treated  W'ith  all  the  respect  due  10 
to  myself." 

"  But  do  you  always  take  him  out  wdth  you,  when  you  go  a 
friendship-hunting  ?  " 

"  Invariably.     'Tis   the    sweetest,  prettiest,  best-conditioned . 
animal.     I  call  him  my  test  —  the  touchstone  by  which  I  try  a  15 
friend.     K'o  one  can  properly  be  said  to  love  me,  who  does  not 
love  him." 

"Excuse  us,  dear  sir — or  madam,  aforesaid  —  if  upon  fur- 
ther consideration  we  are  obliged  to  decline  the  otherwise 
invaluable  offer  of  your  friendship.     We  do  not  like  dogs."         20 

"  Mighty  well,  sir,  —  you  know  the  conditions  —  you  may 
have  w^orse  offers.     Come  along.  Test." 

The  above  dialogue  is  not  so  imaginary,  but  that,  in  the  in- 
tercourse of  life,  we  have  had  frequent  occasions  of  breaking 
off'  an  agreeable  intimacy  by  reason  of  these  canine  aj)pendages.  25 
They  do  not  always  come  in  the  shape  of  dogs  ;  they  sometimes 
w^ear  the  more  plausible  and  human  character  of  kinsfolk,  near 
acquaintances,  my  friend's  friend,  his  partner,  his  wife,  or  his 
children.  We  coiild  never  yet  form  a  friendship  —  not  to  speak 
of  more  delicate  correspondences  —  however  much  to  our  taste,  30 
without  the  intervention  of  some  third  anomaly,  some  iniperti- 
nent  clog  affixed  to  the  relation  —  the  understood  dog  in  the 
proverb.  The  good  things  of  life  are  not  to  be  had  singly,  but 
come  to  us  with  a  mixture ;  like  a  schoolboy's  holiday,  with  a 
task  affixed  to  the  tail  of  it.  What  a  delightful  companion  is  35 
*  *  *  *  ,  if  he  did  not  always  bring  his  tall  cousin  with  him  ! 
He  seems  to  grow  with  him"';  like  some  of  those  double  births, 
which  we  reinember  to  have  read  of  with  such  wonder  and  de- 
light in  the  old  "Athenian  Oracle,"  where  Swift  commenced 


324  THE   ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

author  by  writing*  Pindaric  Odes  (what  a  beginning  for  him  !) 
upon  Sir  William  Temple.  There  is  the  picture  of  the  brother, 
with  the  little  brother  peeping  out  at  his  shouldei  a  species  of 
fraternity,  which  we  have  no  name  of  kin  close  enough  to  com- 
5prehend.  When  *  *  *  *  comes,  poking  in  his  head  and  shoul- 
der into  your  room,  as  if  to  feel  his  entry,  you  think,  surely  you 
have  now  got  him  to  yourself  —  what  a  three  hours  chat  we 
shall  have! — but,  ever  in  the  haunch  of  him.  and  before  his 
diffident  body  is  v/ell  disclosed  in  your  apartment,  appears  the 

10  haunting  shadow  of  the  cousin,  overpeering  his  modest  kins- 
man, and  sure  to  overlay  the  expected  good  talk  with  his  insuf- 
ferable procerity  of  stature,  and  uncorrespouding  dwarfishness 
of  observation.  Misfortunes  seldom  come  alone.  'Tis  hard 
when  a  blessing  comes  accompanied.     Cannot  we  like  Sem- 

15  pronia,  without  sitting  down  to  chess  with  her  eternal  brother  ? 
or  know  Sidpicia,  without  knowing  all  the  round  of  her  card- 
playing  relations?  must  my  friend's  brethren  of  necessity  be 
mine  also  ?  must  we  be  hand  and  glove  with  Dick  Selby  the 
parson,  or  Jack  Selby  the  calico-printer,  because  W.  S.,  who  is 

20  neither,  but  a  ripe  wit  and  a  critic,  has  the  misfortune  to  claim 
a  common  parentage  with  them?  Let  him  lay  down  his  broth- 
ers ;  and  "tis  odds  but  we  will  cast  him  in  a  pair  of  ours  (we 
have  a  superflux)  to  balance  the  concession.  Let  F.  H.  lay 
down  his  garrulous  uncle  ;  and  Honorius  dismiss  his  vapid  wife, 

25  and  superfluous  establishment  of  six  boys  —  things  between  boy 
and  manhood — too  ripe  for  play,  too  raw  for  conversation  — 
that  come  in,  impudently  staring  his  father's  old  friend  out  of 
countenance ;  and  will  neither  aid,  nor  let  alone,  the  confer- 
ence :  that  we  may  once  more  meet  upon  equal  terms,  as  we 

30  were  wont  to  do  in  the  disengaged  state  of  bachelorhood. 

It  is  well  if  your  friend,  or  mistress,  be  content  with  these 
canicular  probations.  Few  young  ladies  but  in  this  sense  keep 
a  dog.  But  when  Rutilia  hounds  at  you  her  tiger  aunt ;  or 
Ruspina  expects  you  to  cherish  and  fondle  her   viper   sister, 

35  whom  she  has  preposterously  taken  into  her  bosom,  to  try  sting- 
ing conclusions  upon  your  constancy ;  they  must  not  complain 
if  the  house  be  rather  thin  of  suitors.  Scylla°  must  have  broken 
off  mau}^  excellent  matches  in  her  time,  if  she  insisted  upon  all 
that  Joved  her,  loving  her  dogs  also. 


YOU  MUST  LOVE  ME  AND   LOVE  MY  DOG     325 

An  excellent  story  to  this  moral  is  told  of  Merry,  of  Delia 
Cruscan  memory.  In  tender  yonth,  he  loved  and^  courted  a 
modest  appanage  to  the  Opera,  in  truth  a  dancer,  who  had  won 
him  by  the  artless  contrast  between  her  manners  and  situation. 
She  seemed  to  him  a  native  violet,  that  had  been  transplanted  5 
by  some  rude  accident  into  that  exotic  and  artificial  hotbed. 
Nor,  in  truth,  was  she  less  genuine  and  sincere  than  she  ap- 
peared to  him.  He  wooed  and  won  this  flower.  Only  for 
appearance  sake,  and  for  due  honour  to  the  bride's  relations, 
she  craved  that  she  might  have  the  attendance  of  her  friends  10 
and  kindred  at  the  approaching  solemnity.  The  request  was 
too  amiable  not  to  be  conceded ;  and  in  this  solicitude  for  con- 
ciliating the  goodwill  of  mere  relations,  he  found  a  presage°  of 
her  superior  attentions  to  himself,  when  the  golden  shaft  should 
have  "killed  the  flock  of  all  affections  else."  The  morning  15 
came;  and  at  the  Star  and  Garter,  Richmond  —  the  place  ap- 
pointed for  the  breakfasting  —  accompanied  with  one  English 
friend,  he  impatiently  awaited  what  reinforcements  the  bride 
should  bring  to  grace  the  ceremony.  A  rich  muster  she  had 
made.  They  came  in  six  coaches  —  the  whole  corps  du  ballet  20 
—  French,  Italian,  men  and  women.  Monsieur  de  B.,  the 
famous  pirouette)'  of  the  day,  led  his  fair  spouse,  but  craggy,  from 
the  banks  of  the  Seine.  The  Prima  iJonna  had  sent  her  ex- 
cuse. But  the  first  and  second  Buffa  were  there  ;  and  Signor 
Sc — ,  and  Signora  Ch — ,  and  Madame  V — ,  with  a  countless  25 
cavalcade  besides  of  choruses,  figurantes,  —  at  the  sight  of 
w^iom  Merry  afterwards  declared,  that  "then  for  the  first  time 
it  struck  him  seriously,  that  he  was  about  to  marry  —  a  dancer." 
But  there  was  no  help  for  it.  Besides,  it  was  her  day ;  these 
were,  in  fact,  her  friends  and  kinsfolk.  The  assemblage,  though  30 
whimsical,  was  all  very  natural.  But  when  the  bride  —  hand- 
ing out  of  the  last  coach  a  still  more  extraordinary  figure  than 
the  rest  —  presented  to  him  as  her  father  —  the  gentleman  that 
was  to  give  her  aiuay  —  no  less  a  person  than  Signor  Delpini 
himself  —  with  a  sort  of  pride,  as  much  as  to  say.  See  what  135 
have  brought  to  do  us  honour! — the  thought  of  so  extraordi- 
nary a  paternity  quite  overcame  him  ;  and  slipping  away  under 
some  pretence  from  the  bride  and  her  motley  adherents,  poor 
Merry  took  horse  from  the  backyard  to  the  nearest  seacoast, 


326  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

from  ^vllicll.  shipping'  himself  to  America,  he  sliortly  after  con- 
soled himself  with  a  more  congenial  match  in  the  person  of 
Miss  Brnnton;  relieved  from  his  intended  clown  father,  and  a 
bevy  of  painted  Buff  as  for  bride-maids. 


THAT   W^E    SHOULD    RISE   WITH    THE    LARK 

5  At  what  precise  minute  that  little  airy  musician  doffs  his  night- 
gear,  and  prepares  to  tune  up  his  unseasonable  matins,  we  are 
not  naturalist  enough  to  determine.  But  for  a  mere  human 
gentleman  —  that  has  no  orchestra  business  to  call  him  from 
his  warm  bed  to  such  preposterous  exercises  —  we  take  ten,  or 

10  half  after  ten  (eleven,  of  course,  during  this  Christmas  solstice), 
to  be  the  very  earliest  hour  at  which  he  can  begin  to  think  of 
abandoning  his  pillow.  To  think  of  it,  we  say ;  for  to  do  it  in 
earnest,  requires  another  half  hour's  good  consideration.  Not  but 
there  are  pretty  sun-risings,  as  we  are  told,  and  such  like  gawds, 

15  abroad  in  the  world,  in  summer-time  especially,  some  hours 
l)efore  what  we  have  assigned;  which  a  gentleman  may  see,  as 
they  say,  only  for  getting  up.  But  having  been  tempted  once 
or  twice,  in  earlier  life,  to  assist  at  those  ceremonies,  we  confess 
our  curiosity  abated.     We  are  no  longer  ambitious   of   being 

20  the  sun's  courtiers,  to  attend  at  his  morning  levees.  We  hold 
the  good  hours  of  the  dawn  too  sacred  to  waste  them  upon 
such  observances ;  which  have  in  them,  besides,  something- 
Pagan  and  Persic.  To  say  truth,  we  never  anticipated  our 
usual  hour,  or  got  up  with  the  sun  (as  'tis  called),  to  go  a 

25  journey,  or  upon  a  foolish  whole  day's  pleasuring,  but  we 
suffered  for  it  all  the  long  hours  after  in  listlessness  and  head- 
aches ;  Nature  herself  sufficiently  declaring  her  sense  of  our 
presumption  in  aspiring  to  regulate  our  frail  waking  courses  by 
the  measures  of  that  celestial  and  sleepless  traveller.     We  deny 

30  not  that  there  is  something  sprightly  and  vigorous,  at  the  out- 
set especially,  in  these  break-of-day  excursions.  It  is  flattering 
to  get  the  start  of  a  lazy  world ;  to  conquer  Death  by  jjroxy  in 
his  image.     But  the  seeds  of  sleep  and  mortality  are  in  us ;  and 


THAT    WE   SHOULD   RISE    WITH   THE  LARK      327 

we  pay  usually  iu  strange  qualms,  before  night  falls,  the  pen- 
;alty  of  the  unnatural  inversion.  Therefore,  while  the  busy 
^part  of  mankind  are  fast  huddling  on  their  clothes,  are  already 
'  up  and  about  their  occupations,  content  to  hate  swallowed  their 
l' sleep  by  wholesale;  we  choose  to  linger  a-bed  and  digest  our  5 
1  dreams.  It  is  the  very  time  to  recombine  the  wandering  im- 
i|  ages,  which  night  in  a  confused  mass  presented ;  to  snatch  them 
jifrom  forgetf ulness ;  to  shape,  and  mould  them.     Some  people 

I  have  no  good  of   their  dreams.     Like  fast  feeders,  they  gulp 

[I  them  too  grossl}',  to  taste  them  curiously.     We  love  to  chew  10 
ij  the  cud  of  a  foregone  vision ;  to  collect  the  scattered  rays  of  a 
i;  brighter  phantasm,  or  act  over  again,  with  firmer  nerves,  the 
li  sadder  nocturnal  tragedies ;  to  drag  into  daylight  a  struggling 

II  and  half -vanishing  nightmare ;    to  handle  and   examine  the 

!  terrors,  or  the  airy  solaces.     AVe  have  too  much  respect  for  15 
i|  these  spiritual  communications,  to  let  them  go  so  lightly.     "We 
■'are  not  so  stupid,  or  so  careless  as  that  Imperial  forgetter  of  his 
;;dreams,°  that  we  should  need  a  seer  to  remind  us  of  the  form 
"'of  theui.     They  seem  to  us  to  have  as  much  significance  as  our 
;!  waking  concerns  ;  or  rather  to  import  us  more  nearly,  as  more  20 
nearly  we  approach  by  years  to  the  shadowy  world,  whither  we 
iare  hastening.     We  have  shaken  hands  with  the  world's  busi- 
'jness;  we  have  done  with  it;  we  have  discharged  ourself  of  it. 
Why  should  we  get  up?  we  have  neither  suit  to  solicit,  nor 
affairs  to  manage.      The   drama   has  shut  in  upon  us  at  the  25 
fourth  act.     We  have  nothing  here  to  expect,  but  in  a  short 
time  a  sick-bed,  and  a  dismissal.     We   delight   to   anticipate 
death  by  such  shadows  as  night  affords.     We  are  already  half 
acquainted  with  ghosts.     We  were  never  much  in  the  world. 
Disappointment  early  struck  a  dark  veil   between  us  and  its  30 
dazzling  illusions.     Our  spirits  showed  grey  before  our  hairs. 
The  mighty  changes  of  the  world  already  appear  as  but  the 
vaiu    stuff   out   of    which    dramas   are   composed.      We   have 
asked  no  more  of  life  than  what  the  mimic  images  in  play- 
houses present  us  with.     Even  those  types  have  waxed  fainter.  35 
Our  clock  appears  to  have  struck.     We  are  superannuated. 
In  this  dearth  of   mundane  satisfaction,   we  conti-act   politic 
alliances  with  shadows.     It  is  good  to  have  friends  at  court. 
The  abstracted  media  of   dreams  seem  no  ill  introduction  to 


328  THE   ESSAYS    OF  ELI  A 

that  spiritual  presence,  upon  which,  in  no  long  time,  we  expect 
to  be  thrown.  "NVe  are  trying  to  know  a  little  of  the  usages  of 
that  colony ;  to  learn  the  language,  and  the  faces  we  shall  meet 
with  there,  that  ^'e  may  be  the  less  awkward  at  our  first  com- 
5ing  among  them.  We  willingly  call  a  phantom  our  fellow,  as 
knowing  we  shall  soon  be  of  their  dark  companionship.  There- 
fore, we  cherish  dreams.  We  try  to  spell  in  them  the  alpha- 
bet of  the  invisible  world;  and  think  we  know  already,  how 
it  shall  be  with  us.     Those  uncouth  shapes  which,  while  we 

10  clung  to  flesh  and  blood,  affrighted  us,  have  become  familiar. 
We  feel  attenuated  into  their  meagre  essences,  and  have  given 
the  hand  of  half-way  approach  to  incorporeal  being.  We  once 
thought  life  to  be  something;  but  it  has  unaccountably  fallen 
from  us  before  its  time.     Therefore  we  choose  to  dally  with 

15  visions.  The  sun  has  no  purposes  of  ours  to  light  us  to.  Why 
should  we  get  up? 

XV 
THAT   WE   SHOULD   LIE   DOWN   WITH   THE   LAMB 

We  could  never  quite  understand  the  philosophy  of  this 
arrangement,  or  the  wisdom  of  our  ancestors  in  sending  us  for 
instruction  to  these  woolly  bedfellows.      A  sheep,  when  it  is 

20  dark,  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  shut  his  silly  eyes,  and  sleep  if 
he  can.  Man  found  out  long  sixes — Hail,  candlelight!  with- 
out disparagement  to  sun  or  moon,  the  kindliest  luminary  of 
the  three  —  if  we  may  not  rather  style  thee  their  radiant  dej^uty, 
mild  viceroy  of  the  moon!  —  We  love  to  read,  talk,  sit  silent, 

25  eat,  drink,  sleep,  by  candlelight.  'J'hey  are  everybody's  sun  and 
moon.  This  is  our  peculiar  and  household  planet.  "NA'anting 
it,  what  savage  unsocial  nights  must  our  ancestors  have  spent, 
wintering  in  caves  and  unillumined  fastnesses!  They  must 
have   lain  about   and   grumbled  at  one   another  in  the  dark. 

30  What  repartees  could  have  passed,  when  you  must  have  felt 
about  for  a  smile,  and  handled  a  neighbour's  cheek  to  be  sure 
that  he  understood  it?  This  accounts  for  the  seriousness  of 
the  elder  poetry.  It  has  a  sombre  cast  (try  Hesiod°  or  Ossian), 
derived  from  the  tradition  of  those  unlantern'd  nights.     Jokes 


WE   SHOULD   LIE   DOWX    WITH   THE  LAMB      329 

came  in  with  candles.     AVe  wonder  how  they  saw  to  pick  up  a 
pin,  if  they  had  any.     How  did  they  sup?  what  a  melange  of 
chance  carving  they  must  have  made  of  it !  —  here  one  had  got 
a  leg  of  a  goat,  when   he  wanted  a  horse's  shoulder  —  there 
another  had  dipt  his  scooped  palm  in  a  kid-skin  of  wild  honey,  5 
when  he  meditated  right  mare's  milk.     There  is  neither  good 
eating  nor  drinking  in  fresco.     Who,  even  in  these   civilized 
times,  has  never  experienced  this,  when  at  some  economic  table 
he  has  commenced  dining  after  dusk,  and  waited  for  the  flavour 
till  the  lights  came?     The  senses  absolntely  give  and  take  re- 10 
ciprocally.     Can  you  tell  pork  from  veal  in  the  dark  ?  or  dis- 
tinguish Sherris  from  pure  Malaga?      Take  away  the  candle 
from  the  smoking  man;  by  the  glimmering  of  the  left  ashes, 
Jie  knows  that  he  is  still  smoking,  but  he  knows  it  only  by  an 
inference ;  till  the  restored  light,  coming  in  aid  of  the  olfac-  15 
tories,  reveals  to  both  senses  the  full  aroma.      Then  how  he 
redoubles   his   puffs!  how  he  burnishes!  —  there  is  absolutely 
no  such  thing  as  reading,  but  by  a  candle.     We  have  tried  the 
affectation  of   a  book    at  noon-day  in   gardens,  and  in  sultry 
arbours ;  but  it  was  labour  thrown  away.     Those  gay  motes  in  20 
the  beam  come  about  you,  hovering  and  teasing,  like  so  many 
coquettes,  that  will  have  you  all  to  their  self,  and  are  jealous  of 
your  abstractions.     By  the  midnight  taper,  the  writer  digests 
his  meditations.     By  the  same  light  we  must  approach  to  their 
perusal,  if  we  would  catcPi  the  flame,  the  odour.     It  is  a  mock-  25 
ery,  all  that  is  reported  of  the  influential  Phoebus.     No  true " 
poem  ever  owed  its  birth  to  the  sun's  light.    They  are  abstracted 
works  — 

Things  that  were  born,  when  none  but  the  still  night, 

And  his  dumb  candle,  saw  his  piucliing  throes.  oq 

Marry,  daylight — daylight  might  furnish  the  images,  the 
crude  material;  but  for  the  fine  shapings,  the  true  turning  and 
filing  (as  mine  author  hath  it),  they  must  be  content  to  hold 
their  inspiration  of  the  candle.  The  mihl  internal  light,  that 
reveals  them,  like  fires  on  the  domestic  hearth,  goes  out  in  the  35 
sunshine.  Night  and  silence  call  out  tlie  starry  fancies.  ]Mil- 
ton's  Morning  ITynni  on  Paradise,  we  would  hold  a  good  wager, 
was  penned  at  midnight;  and  Taylor's  rich  description  of  a 


330  THE    ESSAYS    OF   ELI  A 

sunrise  smells  decidedly  of  the  taper.  Even  ourself,  in  these 
our  humbler  lucubrations  tune  our  best-measured  cadences 
(Prose  has  her  cadeuces)  not  unfrequently  to  the  charm  of  the 
drowsier  watchman,  "  blessing  the  doors  ; "  or  the  wild  sweep  of 
5  winds  at  midnight.  Even  now  a  loftier  speculation  than  we 
have  yet  attempted,  courts  our  endeavours.  We  would  indite 
something  about  the  Solar  System.  —  Betty,  bring  the  candles. 


XVI 

THAT   A   SULKY   TEMPER   IS   A   MISFORTUNE 

We  grant  that  it  is,  and  a  very  serious  one — to  a  man's 
friends,  and  to  all  that  have  to  do  with  him;  but  whether  the 

10  condition  of  the  man  himself  is  so  much  to  be  deplored,  may 
admit  of  a  question.  We  can  speak  a  little  to  it,  being  ourself 
but  lately  recovered  —  we  whisper  it  in  confidence.  Reader  — 
out  of  a  long  and  desperate  fit  of  the  sullens.  Was  the  cure  a 
blessing?     The  conviction  which  wrought  it,  came  too  clearly 

15  to  leave  a  scruple  of  the  fanciful  injuries  —  for  they  were  mere 
fancies  —  which  had  provoked  the  humour.  But  the  humour 
itself  was  too  self-pleasing  while  it  lasted  —  we  know  how'  bare 
we  lay  ourself  in  the  confession  —  to  be  abandoned  all  at  once 
with  the  grounds  of  it.     We  still  brood  over  wrongs  which  we 

20 know  to  have  been  imaginary;  and  for  our  old  acquaintance 

X ,  w^hom  we  find  to  have  been  a  truer  friend  than  we  took 

him  for,  we  substitute  some  phantom  —  a  Cains  or  a  Titius  — 
as  like  him  as  we  dare  to  form  it,  to  wreak  our  yet  unsatisfied 
resentments  on.     It  is  mortifying  to  fall  at  once  from  the  pin- 

25  nacle  of  neglect ;  to  forego  the  idea  of  having  been  ill-used  and 
contumaciously  treated  by  an  old  friend.  The  first  thing  to 
aggrandize  a  man  in  his  ow^n  conceit,  is  to  conceive  of  himself 
as  neglected.  There  let  him  fix  if  he  can.  To  undeceive  him 
is  to  deprive  him  of  the  most  tickling  morsel  within  the  range 

30  of  self-complacency.  No  flattery  can  come  near  it.  Happy  "is 
he  w^ho  suspects  his  friend  of  an'^injustice  ;  but  supremely  bfest, 
who  thinks  all  his  friends  in  a  conspiracy  to  depress  and  un- 
dervalue him.     There  is  a  pleasure  (we  sing  not  to  the  profane) 


THAT  A   SULKY   TEMPER  IS  A   MISFORTUNE     331 

far  beyond  the  reach  of  all  that  the  world  counts  joy  —  a  deep, 
enduring  satisfaction  in  the  depths,  where  the  superficial  seek 
it  not,  of  discontent.  Were  w^e  to  recite  one  half  of  this  mys- 
tery —  w^hich  w-e  were  let  into  by  our  late  dissatisfaction,  all 
the  w^orld  w^ould  be  in  love  with  disrespect ;  we  should  w^ear  a  5 
slight  for  a  bracelet,  and  neglects  and  contumacies  would  be  the 
only  matter  for  courtship.  Unlike  to  that  mysterious  book  in 
the  Apocalyi3se,  the  study  of  this  mystery  is  unpalatable  only 
in  the  commencement.  The  first  sting  ol  a  suspicion  is  griev- 
ous ;  but  wait — out  of  that  wound,  which  to  flesh  and  blood  10 
seemed  so  difficult,  there  is  balm  and  honey  to  be  extracted. 
Your  friend  passed  you  on  such  or  such  a  day,  —  having  in  his 
company  one  that  you  conceived  worse  than  ambiguously  dis- 
posed towards  you, — passed  you  in  the  street  without  notice. 
To  be  sure,  he  is  something  short-sighted;  and  it  was  in  your  15 
power  to^have  accosted  hhji.  But  facts  and  sane  inferences  are 
trifles  to   a  true  adept  in  the   science  of  dissatisfaction.     He 

must  have  seen  you;  and  S ,  who  was  with  him,  must  have 

been  the  cause  of  the  contempt.  It  galls  you,  and  well  it  may. 
But  have  patience.  Go  home,  and  make  the  worst  of  it,  and  20 
you  are  a  made  man  from  this  time.  Shut  yourself  up,  and  — 
rejecting,  as  an  enemy  to  your  peace,  every  whispering  sugges- 
tion that  but  insinuates  there  may  be  a  mistake  —  reflect  seri- 
ously upon  the  many  lesser  instances  which  you  had  begun  to 
perceive,  in  -pvoot  of  your  friend's  disaffection  tow^ards  you.  25 
None  of  them  singly  was  much  to  the  purpose,  but  the  aggre- 
gate weight  is  positive ;  and  you  have  this  last  affront  to  clench 
them.  Thus  far  the  process  is  anything  but  agreeable.  But 
now  to  your  relief  comes  in  the  comparative  faculty.  You  con- 
jure up  all  tha  kind  feelings  you  have  had  for  your  friend;  30 
what  you  have  been  to  him,  and  what  you  would  have  been  to 
him,  if  he  would  have  suffered  you  ;  how  you  defended  hini  in 
this  or  that  place ;  and  his  good  name  — his  literary  reputation, 
and  so  forth,  was  alw^ays  dearer  to  you  than  your  own  !  Your 
heart,  spite  of  itself,  yearns  tow^ards  him.  You  could  weep  35 
tears  of  blood  but  for  a  restraining  pride.  How  say  you  ?  do 
von  not  yet  begin  to  apprehend  a  comfort  ?  some  allay  of  sweet- 
ness in  the  bitter  waters  ?  Stop  not  here,  nor  penuriously  cheat 
yourself  of  your  reversions.     You  are  on  vantage  ground.     En- 


332  THE    ESSAYS    OF    ELI  A 

large  your  speculations,  and  take  in  the  rest  of  your  friends,  as 
a  spark  kindles  more  sparks.  Was  there  one  among  them  who 
has  not  to  you  proved  hollow,  false,  slippery  as  water?  Begin 
to  think  that  the  relation  itself  is  inconsistent  with  mortality. 
5  That  the  very  idea  of  friendship,  with  its  component  parts,  as 
honour,  fidelity,  steadiness,  exists  but  in  your  single  bosom. 
Image  yourself  to  yourself,  as  the  only  possible  friend  in  a 
world  incapable  of  that  communion.  Now  the  gloom  thickens. 
The  little  star  of  self-love  twinkles,  that  is  to  encourage  you 

10  through  deeper  glooms  than  this.  You  are  not  yet  at  the  half 
point  of  your  elevation.  You  are  not  yet,  believe  me,  half 
sulky  enough.  Adverting  to  the  world  in  general  (as  these 
circles  in  the  mind  will  spread  to  infinity),  reflect  with  what 
strange  injustice  you  have  been  treated  in  quarters  where  (set- 

15  ting  gratitude  and  the  expectation  of  friendly  returns  aside  as 
chimperas)  you  j)i'etended  no  claim  beyond  justice,  the  naked 
due  of  all  men.  Think  the  very  idea  of  right  and  fit  fled  from 
the  earth,  or  your  breast  the  solitary  receptacle  of  it,  till  you 
have  swelled  yourself  into  at  least  one  hemisphere ;  the  other 

20  being  the  vast  Arabia  Stony  of  your  friends  and  the  world 
aforesaid.  To  grow  bigger  every  moment  in  your  own  conceit, 
and  the  world  to  lessen  ;  to  deify  yourself  at  the  expense  of  your 
species ;  to  judge  the  world  —  this  is  the  acme  and  supreme  point 
of  your    mystery  —  these  the  true  Pleasures  of  Sulkixess. 

25  AYe  profess  no  more  of  this  grand  secret  than  what  our- 
self  experimented  on  one  rainy  afternoon  in  the  last  week,  sulk- 
ing in  our  study.  AYe  had  proceeded  to  the  penultiniate  point, 
at  which  the  true  adept  seldom  stops,  where  the  consideration 
of  benefit  forgot  is  about  to  merge  in  the  meditation  of  general 

30  injustice — when  a  knock  at  the  door  was  followed  by  the 
entrance  of  the  very  friend  whose  not  seeing  of  us  in  the  morn- 
ing (for  we  will  now  confess  the  case  our  own),  an  accidental 
oversight,  had  given  rise  to  so  much  agreeable  generalization  I 
To  mortify  us  still  more,  and  take  down  the  whole  flattering 

35  superstructure    which   pride  had  piled    upon   neglect,  he  had 

brought  in  his  hand  the  identical  S ,  in  whose  favour  we 

had  suspected  him  of  the  contumacy.  Asseverations  were  need- 
less, where  the  frank  manner  of  them  both  was  convictive  of 
the  injurious  nature  of  the  suspicion.     We  fancied  that  they 


THAT  A    SULKY    TEMPER   IS   A    MISFORTUNE      333 

perceived  our  embarrassment;  but  were  too  proud,  or  some- 
thing else,  to  confess  to  the  secret  of  it,  AVe  had  been  but  too 
lately  in  the  condition  of  the  noble  patient  in  Argos°:  — 

Qui  se  credebat  miros  audire  tragcedos, 

In  vacuo  laetus  sessor  plausorque  theatre  —  5 

and  could  have  exclaimed  with  equal  reason  against  the  friendly 
hands  that  cured  us  — 

Pol,  me  occidistis,  araici, 
Non  servastis,  ait  :  cui  sic  extorta  voluptas, 
Et  demptus  per  vim  mentis  gratissimus  error.  10 


NOTES 

THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE 

London  Magazine,  August,  1820.  Original  title :  Becollections  oj 
the  South-Sea  House.  For  Lamb's  connection  with  the  South-Sea 
House,  see  Introduction,  p.  xi. 

I  :  3.  Annuitant.  Lamb  did  not  become  an  annuitant  until  1825 ; 
and  then  (see  Introduction)  of  the  East-India  House. 

1  :  11.  Balclutha.  In  Macpherson's  poem  Carthon,  a  town 
belonging  to  the  Britons,  taken  and  burned  by  the  father  of  the 
Irish  hero  Fingal,  "  I  have  seen  the  walls  of  Balclutha,  but  they 
were  desolate.  The  fire  had  resounded  in  the  halls  ;  and  the  voice 
of  the  people  is  heard  no  more."  Carthon  is  one  of  a  collec- 
tion of  "supposed  translations"  published  1760-1763  by  James 
Macpherson,  and  ascribed  by  him  to  Ossian,  a  Gaelic  poet  and  war- 
rior of  the  third  century.  "A  controversy  instantly  sprang  up 
between  those  who  believed  and  those  who  disbelieved  in  the 
authenticity  of  these  works.  Macpherson  found  a  sturdy  sceptic 
in  Dr.  Johnson." — Edmund  Gosse,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury Literature. 

2  :  7.   Mammon.     The  personification  of  riches. 

2:9.  Famous  Bubble.  The  reference  is  to  "The  South-Sea 
Bubble  "  of  1720.  See  Green's  Short  History  of  the  English  Peo- 
ple, Ch.  IX.,  Sec.  X. 

2  :  28.  Titan  size.  Gigantic.  The  Titans  were  giants  of  classic 
mythology.  Vaux's  superhuman  plot.  Guido  Vaux,  or  Guy 
Fawkes.  The  reference  is  to  the  "Gunpowder  Plot,"  November 
5,  1605,  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  of  England. 

335 


336  NOTES 

2  :  29.    manes.    A  classic  term  for  the  spirits  of  the  dead. 

3 :  1.    Compare  feeling  for  antiquity,  p.  11  of  the  essay  on  Oxford. 
3»:  7.    rubric.     Written  or  printed  in  red. 

3  :  17.  Herculaneum.  The  city  overwhelmed  with  Pompeii  in 
the  eruption  of  Mount  Vesuvius.  Excavations  have  brought  to 
light  many  valuable  manuscripts  and  statues.  pounce-boxes. 
Boxes  holding  pounce,  or  powder,  which  was  sprinkled  on  written 
sheets,  to  dry  the  ink.  The  place  of  these  was  supplied  by  blotting- 
paper  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  centuiy. 

3  :  22.  genius  of  the  place.  Genius  means  here,  and  elsewhere 
in  the  essays,  "  the  inborn  nature,"  "  the  ruling  spirit." 

3  :  26.  Humourists.  A  humourist  here  means,  "a  person  who 
acts  according  to  his  humour  ;  —  a  person  of  eccentric  character." 

3  :  37.  Evans.  William  Evans,  like  the  othet  characters  whom 
Lamb  describes  in  this  essay,  was  really  a  clerk  in  the  South-Sea 
House.  Their  names  are  not,  as  Lamb  suggests  later,  "fantastic 
and  insubstantial "  ;  each  one  of  the  men  named  "  had  a  being." 

3  :  37.  Cambro-Briton.  A  Welshman.  From  "  Cambria,"  the 
Latin  name  for  Wales. 

4:3.  Maccaronies.  First  used  in  this  sense  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  Horace  Walpole  writes,  in  1764,  of  "The  Maccaroni 
Club  (w^iich  is  composed  of  all  the  travelled  young  men  who  wear 
long  curls  and  spying-glasses)." 

4  :  20.  Pennant.  Thomas  Pennant,  a  naturalist  and  antiquarian  ; 
a  writer  on  archaeology.  He  had  published  an  Account  of  Lon- 
don, 1790. 

4  :  26.  William  Hogarth.  An  English  painter  and  engraver 
(1697-1764).  Lamb  called  Hogarth  "one  of  the  greatest  orna- 
ments of  England."  His  admiration  he  embodied  in  an  essay  On 
the  Genius  and  Character  of  Hogarth.  Here  he  speaks  of  having 
been  familiar  from  boyhood  with  certain  "capital  prints  by  Ho- 
garth." 

4  :  28.    confessors.     A  confessor  is  "  one  who  adheres  to  his  reli- 


NOTES  337 

gion  under  persecution,  but  does  not  suffer  martyrdom."  These 
were  Huguenots  who  fled  from  France  after  the  Revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes,  1685. 

4  :  35.  Westminster  Hall.  Adjoining  the  Houses  of  Parliament, 
to  which  it  now  serves  as  a  vestibule.  It  was  part  of  the  ancient 
palace  of  Westminster,  where  sat  some  of  the  first  English  Parlia- 
ments. 

4 :  39.  Refer  to  Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  Bk.  VIII. ,  454,  and  point 
out  the  words  in  this  passage  originally  printed  in  quotation  marks 
in  the  London  Magazine. 

5  :  4.  original  state  of  white  paper.  "  Let  us  then  suppose  the 
mind  to  be,  as  we  say,  white  paper,  void  of  all  characters,  without 
any  ideas;  how  comes  it  to  be  furnished?"  —  John  Locke,  An 
Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding ,  Bk.  II.,  Ch.  I. 

5  :  21.  Decus  et  solamen.  "  Honour  (or  glory)  and  consolation." 
ViKGiL,  uEneid,  Bk.  X.,  858. 

5  :  28.  Orphean  Lyre.  Refer  to  Paradise  Lost,  Bk.  III.,  17,  and 
point  out  the  words  here  originally  printed  in  quotation  marks 
in  the  London  Magazine.  Orpheus  was  the  famous  musician  of 
classic  mythology,  the  beauty  of  whose  music  had  a  powerful  charm. 

5  :  32.  To  the  sentence  in  parenthesis  was  appended,  in  the 
London  Magazine,  a  footnote  referring  to  "the  present  tenant" 
of  these  rooms,  "  a  Mr.  Lamb"  ;  i.e.  Lamb's  own  brother. 

5  :  34.  Sweet  breasts.  "  Svsreet-breasted  "  is  defined  in  the  Cen- 
tury Dictionary  as  "sweet-voiced"  ;  from  breast  in  the  old  sense 
of  "musical  voice." 

5  :  38.  Lord  Midas.  In  classic  legend  a  king  of  Phrygia  wlio 
was  judge  of  a  musical  contest  between  Pan  (see  note  below)  and 
Apollo,  the  god  of  music ;  in  his  ignorance  he  awarded  the  prize  to 
Pan. 

6:35.  With  Fortinbras.  Shakespeare,  Hamlet,  IV.,  iv.,  55-50. 
For  a  criticism  of  the  account  of  John  Tipp,  see  Introduction, 
p.  XX. 

z 


338  NOTES 

7 : 4.  dusty  dead.  Find  a  parallel  in  this  line  to  Shakespeare's 
Macbeth,  V.,  v.,  22,  23. 

7  :  12.  Barbican.  A  street  in  London.  Named  probably  from  a 
barbican,  or  tower,  which  must  have  stood  there  originally. 

7:14.  New-born  gauds.  Shakespeare,  Troihis  and  Cressida, 
III.,  iii.,  176.  "Gaud"  meant  a  festivity,  a  rejoicing  (Latin  gan- 
dere,  "to  rejoice")  ;  a  showy  ceremony.  A  "gaudy-day"  was  a 
festival  or  holiday  ;  see  essay  on  Christ^s  Hospital. 

7 :  19.  Wilkes.  There  is  a  discussion  of  the  justice  of  the  pun- 
ishment of  John  Wilkes  in  Edmund  Burke's  Thoughts  on  the 
Cause  of  the  Present  Discontents,  1770. 

7 :  24.   Plumers.      The  family  of  Plumers  owned  the  old  house 

described  in  "  Blakesmoor  in  H shire."     See  also  Introduction, 

p.  xii. 

7:34.  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  (1709-1784).  The  celebrated  Eng- 
lish lexicographer,  essayist,  and  poet.  See  his  famous  biography 
by  James  Boswell. 

8 :  3.  Arcadian  melodies.  Arcadia  was  the  residence  of  Pan, 
god  of  shepherds  ;  and  is  a  name  for  any  land  where  one  may 
"  fleet  the  time  carelessly  as  they  did  in  the  golden  world."  "  Ar- 
cadian" here  would  mean  "pastoral." 

8 :  4.  Arden.  Look  for  this  song  in  Shakespeare's  As  You  Like 
It,  IL,  7. 

8:16.  Newton.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  (1642-1727),  the  English 
mathematician  and  philosopher,  who  discovered  the  law  of 
gTavitation. 

8 :  18.  Nib  a  pen.  Notice  reference  here  to  the  old-fashioned 
methods.  To  nib  a  pen  meant  to  "furnish  with  a  nib  or 
point";  i.e.  to  trim  a  quill  pen  to  a  point;  a  wafer  was  "a 
thin  disc  of  dried  paste  used  to  seal  letters,  to  fasten  documents 
together." 

8:23.  Fantastic.  See  also  fantastical  later;  imaginary.  In 
Shakespeare's  Macbeth,  I.,  iii.,  53,  Banquo  questions  the  witches  :  — 


NOTES  339 

"  Are  ye  fantastical,  or  that  indeed 
Which  outwardly  ye  show  ?  " 

8 :  24.  Henry  Pimpernel,  etc.  Erom  the  Introduction  to  Shake- 
speare's Taming  of  the  Shrew.  Here  one  of  the  duke's  servants 
quotes  these  names  in  a  speech  to  Christopher  Sly,  the  tinker,  and 
concludes :  — 

"  And  twenty  more  such  names  and  men  as  these 
Which  never  were  nor  no  man  ever  saw." 

OXFORD   IN  THE   VACATION 

London  Magazine.,  October,  1820. 

8:30.  Quis  sculpsit.  Literally,  "Who  carved  or  graved?'* 
That  is,  the  •  name  of  the  artist. 

8 :  34.    Humours.     "  Peculiarities  of  disposition," 

9  :  3.  Notched.  Attribute  of  his  desk,  figuratively  applied  to  the 
scrivener. 

9 :  6.   Agnize.     Remember. 

9 :  31.  red-letter  days.  Important  church  feast-days  are  indi- 
cated in  the  calendar  by  red  lettering.  The  observance  of  these  as 
holidays  gave  the  meaning  now  attached  to  the  expression. 

9 :  36.    Christ's  Hospital.     See  next  essay. 

9 :  37.  Basket!  Prayer  Book.  Edited  by  John  Baskett,  printer  to 
King  George  II. 

lo :  1.  Marsyas,  Spagnoletti.  Reference  to  a  painting  in  the 
Museum  of  Madrid,  by  an  artist  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Jusepe 
Ribera  (Re-ba'ra),  known  as  Spagnoletto,  "  Little  Spaniard."  The 
picture  represents  the  flaying  of  Marsyas,  who  had  challenged  the 
classic  god  Apollo  to  a  musical  contest,  and  was  thus  punished  for 
his  presumption. 

lo:  5.  The  better  Jude.  St.  Jude  the  Apostle,  as  distinguished 
from  Judas  Iscariot,  that  one  of  the  twelve  Apostles  who  betrayed 
Christ. 


340  NOTES 

lo :  6.  gaudy-day.  A  gaudy-day  was  originally  an  annual  feast- 
day  in  commemoration  of  some  event  in  the  history  of  a  college. 
Hence,  any  festal  occasion. 

lo:  11.  Epiphany.  From  a  Greek  word  meaning  "a  striking 
appearance,  a  manifestation."  January  6,  the  Church  feast  which 
commemorates  "the  manifestation  of  the  glory  of  Christ,"  in  the 
adoration  of  the  Magi,  in  His  baptism,  and  in  the  miracle  at  the 
marriage  of  Cana.  This  feast,  falling  twelve  days  after  Christmas, 
was  called  in  England  "Twelfth  Day."  See  later,  Bejoicings  on 
the  New  Tear^s  Coming  of  Age. 

io:15.  Tides.  Times  or  seasons.  Preserved  in  "Whitsun- 
tide "  ;  "time  and  tide,"  etc. 

io:20.  Selden.  John  Selden  (1584-1654),  a  jurist  and  anti- 
quary, wiio  had  studied  at  Oxford,  and  who  wrote  on  questions  of 
English  law.     He  lived  for  a  time  in  the  Inner  Temple. 

lo:  21.  Archbishop  Usher,  of  the  Church  of  England  in  the  reign 
of  Charles  I.     He  published  a  scheme  of  "  biblical  chronology." 

io:22.  Shadow  of  the  mighty  Bodley.  At  the  close  of  this 
essay,  as  it  first  appeared  in  the  London  JIagazine,  is  printed, 
"  August  5th,  1820.  From  my  rooms  facing  the  Bodleian."  The 
great  Bodleian  Library  of  Oxford  was  so  named  from  its  founder. 
Sir  Thomas  Bodley. 

Compare  the  one  of  Lamb's  sonnets  beginning,  — 

"  I  was  not  trained  in  Academic  bowers." 

Here  occur  the  lines  :  — 

"  Yet  can  I  fancy,  wandering  'mid  thy  towers, 
Myself  a  nursling,  Granta,  of  thy  lap  : 
My  brow  seems  tightening  with  the  Doctor's  cap, 
And  I  walk  goivned.'^ 

In  the  Memoirs  of  William  Hazlitt  (see  Introduction,  p.  xiv)  is 
this  reference  to  a  visit  he  paid  Oxford  with  Charles  and  Mary 


NOTES  341 

Lamb :  —  "lie  [Lamb]  and  the  old  colleges  were  hail  fellow  well 
met ;  and  in  the  quadrangles  he  walked  '  gowned,'  " 

io:31.   ad  eundem.     "To  the  same  standing." 

lo :  33.  Sizar,  Servitor.  A  sizar,  or  sizer,  was  a  student  at  Cam- 
bridge, or  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  who  ate  at  the  public  table 
after  the  fellows,  free  of  expense  ;  in  return  he  was  obliged  to  per- 
form certain  menial  services  for  the  college.  The  sizers  were 
originally  so  called  because,  as  waiters,  they  distributed  the  "sizes," 
or  portions,  of  provisions.  Oliver  Goldsmith  was  a  sizar  at  Trinity 
College.     A  servitor  was  a  student  of  similar  rank  at  Oxford. 

ID :  34.  Gentleman  commoner,  a  student  distinguished  from  the 
ordinary  commoners  by  special  academic  dress,  by  dining  at  a 
separate  table,  and  by  paying  higher  fees. 

II :  1.  reverend.  Reverend  because  Christ  Church  was  originally 
a  cathedral.  Henry  VIII.  connected  this  with  the  college  he  com- 
pleted here,  originally  founded  by  Cardinal  Wolsey.  The  Latin 
name  for  Christ's  is  ^des  Christi.  It  is  not  called  "  College,"  but 
is  spoken  of  familiarly  as  "The  House." 

II :  2.  Seraphic  Doctor.  "  Doctor  Seraphicus,"  St.  Bonaventura 
of  Italy,  who  lived  in  the  thirteenth  century  ;  he  was  called  "sera- 
phic "  because  of  his  fervor. 

1 1  :  6.   Devoir.     Duty  ;  from  the  French. 

II  :  8.  beadsman.  One  who  counts  his  prayers  on  his  beads,  as 
he  says  them  for  others.     See  Keats's  St.  Agues'  Eve. 

II :  15.    Manciple.     A  steward  (O.  F.  Mancipe). 

II  :  21.  half  Januses.  Janus,  the  porter  of  heaven  in  classic 
mythologjs  who  opens  the  year  (January)  ;  the  deity  of  gates,  who 
has  two  faces,  and  looks  therefore  both  backward  and  forward. 

ii:31.  Oxenford.  Old  name  for  Oxford.  "A  clerk  ther  was  of 
Oxenford  also." —Chaucer,  Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales. 
arride.  "  To  please,  gratify,  delight."  Obsolete.  Compare  11.  5-33 
with  the  first  four  paragraphs  of  "  The  South-Sea  House." 

II  :  footnote.    Sir  Thomas  Browne  (1G05-1G82).     English  phy. 


342  NOTES 

sician  and  writer.  A  great  favourite  with  Lamb  (see  Iritroduction, 
p.  xix),  who  refers  constantly  to  his  Beligio  Jledici,  his  Urn  Burial, 
and  his  Chiistian  Morals,  and  quotes  often  from  them. 

12  :  4.  sciential.  Productive  of  knowledge.  What  apples  are 
here  referred  to  ? 

12:7.  variae  lectiones.  "Different  readings,"  suggested  by 
students  of  old  manuscripts,  who  do  not  always  agree  in  their 
interpretations.  At  this  point  in  the  London  3Iagazine  followed  a 
footnote,  in  which  Lamb  told  of  his  feeling  on  seeing  the  original 
written  copy  of  Lycidas,  which  he  had  thought  of  as  a  "  full-grown 
beauty."  "  I  will  never,"  he  concludes,  "go  into  the  workshop  of 
any  great  artist  again." 

12  :  9.  The  three  witnesses.  Reference  to  verses  in  the  First 
Epistle  of  St.  John,  which  stand  in  the  Douay  (translation  of  the 
Latin  Vulgate),  but  are  omitted  from  the  Revised  Version. 

12  :  10.  Person.  Richard  Person  (1759-1808),  the  famous  scholar, 
and  professor  of  Greek  at  the  University  of  Cambridge.  He  was 
"  well  known  as  a  wit  and  genial  companion." 

12  :  11.  G.  D.  George  Dyer,  a  student  and  writer;  editor  of 
Valpy's  edition  of  the  classics.  He  published  a  History  of  the 
University  and  Colleges  of  Cambridge.  His  eccentricities  fur- 
nished Lamb  with  numberless  occasions  for  jokes ;  in  many  of 
Lamb's  letters  are  passages  which  recall  the  tone  of  this  essay.  It 
was  Dyer  whom  Lamb  told — as  he  added  in  a  footnote  to  this  essay 
in  the  magazine  —  that  "  Lord  Castelreagh  had  acknowledged  him- 
self to  be  the  author  of  Waverley^ 

12  :  13.    Oriel.     The  library  of  Oriel  contains  many  rare  books. 

12  :  16.   Scapula.     Author  of  a  Greek  lexicon. 

13  :  18.  M.'s.  Basil  Montagu,  an  intimate  friend  of  Lamb,  and 
of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge. 

13  :  22.  Queen  Lar.  From  the  classic  Lares,  or  Lars,  souls  ol 
ancestors,  deified  spirits,  who  became  household  gods.  To  compli- 
ment Mrs.  Montagu,  Lamb  has  used  this  idea  of  a  "  Queen  Lar  "  ; 


NOTES  343 

i.e.  a  queen  of  the  hearth,  or  home.  A.  S.  Anne  Skepper,  Mr. 
Montagu's  stepdaughter,  who  married  Bryan  Procter,  "  Barry- 
Corn  wall "  (see  Introduction,  p.  xiv). 

13  :  29.  Sosia.  One  of  two  counterparts  in  the  Latin  comedy 
Amphitruo^  by  Plautus.  This  play  is  one  of  the  sources  of  Shake- 
speare's Comedy  of  Errors. 

13 :  38.  Parnassus.  The  seat  of  music  and  poetry,  where  dwelt 
Apollo  and  the  nymphs  and  muses.  Plato,  Harrington.  The 
famous  Greek  philosopher  Plato  framed  his  ideal  Republic  before 
347  B.C.,  the  date  of  his  death  at  Athens.  James  Harrington  wrote 
the  Commonwealth  of  Oceana  in  1656.  Edmund  Burke,  in  his 
Speech  on  Conciliation^  introduces  his  plan  of  peace  as  follows : 
"  I  am  not  even  obliged  to  go  to  the  rich  treasury  of  the  fertile 
framers  of  imaginary  commonwealths;  —  not  to  the  Republic  of 
Plato,  not  to  the  Utopia  of  More,  not  to  the  Oceana  of  Harrington." 
Sir  Thomas  More's  satire  was  published  in  1516.  Here  followed  in 
the  London  Magazine  two  paragraphs  on  G.  D.,  omitted  from  the 
1823  edition,  because  a  correspondent  in  the  magazine  had  protested 
against  them.  Lamb  replied  under  the  Lion'^s  Head,  December, 
1820,  that  "under  the  initials  G.  D.  it  was  his  ambition  to  make 
more  familiar  to  the  public,  a  character  which  for  integrity  and 
single-heartedness  he  had  long  been  accustomed  to  rank  among  the 
best  patterns  of  his  species.  .  .  .  That  the  anecdotes  which  he 
produced  were  no  more  than  he  conceived  necessary  to  awaken 
attention  to  character,  and  were  meant  solely  to  illustrate  it,"  The 
essay  "  Amicus  Redivivus  "  treats  of  Dyer  again,  and  of  his  absent- 
mindedness. 

14  :  8.  Cam  and  Isis.  The  rivers  that  flow  by  the  two  great 
universities.  From  the  Cam,  Cambridge  took  its  name.  Milton 
personifies  the  river  in  Lycidas. 

"Next,  Camus,  reverend  sire,  went  footing  slow, 
His  mantle  hairy,  and  his  bonnet  sedge." 


344  NOTES 

14  :  9.  Waters  of  Damascus.  See  4  Kings  v.,  12.  Muses'  hill. 
Either  Helicon,  ^N^here  rose  the  fountains  of  Aganippe  and  Hippo- 
crene,  sources  of  inspiration  ;  or  Parnassus. 

14  :  10,  13.  Shepherds  on  the  Delectable  Mountains,  and  House 
Beautiful.     In  John  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress. 


CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL  FIVE   AND   THIRTY   YEARS   AGO 

London  Magazine,  November,  1820. 

14:14.  Mr.  Lamb's  "Works."  The  first  collection  of  Lamb's 
writings,  published,  1818,  by  C.  and  J.  Oilier.  This  collection 
included  a  drama,  John  Woodvil,  a  story,  Bosamund  Gray,  some 
verse,  and  several  essays  which  had  previously  appeared  in  periodi- 
cals ;  among  these  last  was  the  Recollections  of  Chrisfs  Hospital, 
first  published,  1813,  in  The  Gentleman's  Magazine.  One  of  the 
original  meanings  of  "Hospital" — with  which  it  is  used  in 
the  name  of  the  school  —  was  a  charitable  institution  for  the  edu- 
cation and  maintenance  of  the  young.  "  In  the  time  of  Henry  the 
Eighth,  Christ-Hospital  was  a  monastery  of  Franciscan  friars.  Be- 
ing dissolved,  among  the  others,  Edward  the  Sixth  .  .  .  assigned  the 
revenues  of  it  to  the  maintenance  and  education  of  a  certain  num- 
ber of  poor  orphan  children  born  of  citizens  of  London.  .  .  .  Christ- 
Hospital  (for  this  is  the  proper  name,  and  not  Christ's  Hospital) 
occupies  a  considerable  portion  of  ground  between  Newgate  Street, 
Giltspur  Street,  St.  Bartholomew's,  and  Little  Britain."  —  Leigh 
Hunt,  Autobiography,  Ch.  III.  For  a  description  of  this  part  of 
London,  read  Washington  Irving' s  Little  Britain  in  The  Sketch- 
Book.  The  main  buildings  of  the  school  were  all  seen  from 
Newgate  Street,  beyond  high  iron  railings,  and  in  the  old  days  in 
recreation  hour,  one  could  see  the  boys  with  their  blue  gowns 
tucked  up,  playing  ball ;  there  was  usually  a  line  of  people  peering 
at  them  through  the  railings.    In  May,  1902,  the  school  was  removed 


NOTES  345 

to  Horsham,  in  Sussex,  the  old  building  torn  down,  and  the  site 
bought,  partly  by  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital  and  partly  by  the 
General  Post-office.  In  some  early  verses  Lamb  has  described  him- 
self in  the  school  uniform.  In  his  Autobiography^  Ch.  III.,  Leigh 
Hunt  describes  the  costume  in  full. 

15  :  7.  Banyan.  "  Banian"  is  a  name  given  to  a  Hindoo  in  West- 
ern India.  In  reference  to  the  Banians'  abstinence  from  flesh,  days 
on  which  no  allowance  of  meat  was  served  were  called,  in  nautical 
language,  "banyan  days." 

15  :  11.  care  equina.     Horseflesh. 

15  :  20.  The  good  old  relative.  "  My  poor  old  aunt,  whom  you 
have  seen,  the  kindest,  goodest  creature  to  me  when  I  was  at 
school ;  who  used  to  toddle  there  to  bring  me  good  things,  when  I, 
schoolboy  like,  only  despised  her  for  it,  and  used  to  be  ashamed  to 
see  her  come  and  sit  herself  down  on  the  old  coal-hole  steps  as  you 
went  into  the  grammar  school,  and  open  her  apron,  and  bring  out 
her  bason,  with  some  nice  thing  she  had  caused  to  be  saved  for  me." 
-.  Lamb,  in  a  letter  to  Coleridge,  January.  1797. 

15:22.  regale.  A  banquet  (pronounced  re-gal'),  cates.  Origi- 
nally "  acates."  Things  purchased,  —  such  provisions  as  are  not  in 
the  house  ;  hence,  dainties,  luxuries.    (French,  achctrj',  "  to  buy.") 

15  :  23.  The  Tishbite.  Elias.  or  Elijah,  the  Thesbite,  who  was 
fed  by  ravens.     See  3  Kings  xvii. 

15  :  30.  I  was  a  poor  friendless  boy.  Here  Lamb  writes  in  the 
person  of  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  his  schoolmate  (see  Intro- 
duction, p.  xi).  See  Preface  to  "Last  Essays,"  p.  183.  The 
memorial  to  Coleridge  at  Christ's  is  a  bronze  statuette  representing 
Coleridge  as  a  boy,  reading,  Charles  Lamb  beside  him  on  his  right, 
and  on  his  left  an  older  schoolmate,  Thomas  Fanshaw  Middleton, 
whom  Lamb  refers  to  later  in  this  essay.  There  is  a  picture  of 
this  memorial  in  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas's  volume  of  the  Essays  of  Elia. 
The  memorial  to  Lamb  at  the  school  is  a  medal  given  annually  as 
a  prize  for  the  best  English  essays. 


346  NOTES 

i6  :  5.  Calne  in  Wiltshire.  This  stands  for  Coleridge's  home, 
Ottery  St.  Mary,  hi  Devonshire. 

i6 :  35.  L.'s  governor.  For  a  further  account  of  Samuel  Salt,  see 
Old  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple  and  notes. 

17:21.    Nero.     The  cruel  and  tyrannical  emperor  of  Rome,  54- 

68  A.D. 

17 :  30.  Caligula's  minion.  A  horse,  proclaimed  consul  and 
worshipped  as  a  god  by  Caligula,  emperor  of  Rome,  37-41  a.d. 

17:32.  waxing  fat  and  kicking.  Deuteronomy  xxxii.,  15.  See 
Grace  before  3Ieat,  p.  112,  1.  33. 

17:  35.  walls  of  his  own  Jericho.  "  So  all  the  people  making 
a  shout,  and  the  trumpets  sounding,  when  the  voice  and  the  sound 
thundered  in  the  ears  of  the  multitude,  the  walls  forthwith  fell 
down." — Joshua  vi.,  20. 

18  :  12.  harpies.  Harpies  were  horrible  birds  with  the  heads  of 
women,  and  brazen  claws  ;  they  snatched  the  food  from  ^neas 
and  his  followers,  who  had  landed  on  their  island.  —  See  Virgil, 
^neid,  Bk.  III. 

18: 13.   Trojan  in  the  hall  of  Dido.     JEneid.  Bk.  I.,  464. 

20:21.  auto-da-fe.  ••  Act  of  the  faith."  Portuguese  and  Span- 
ish form  of  words  used  in  Spain  to  mean  the  execution  of  a  sen- 
tence of  the  Inquisition. 

20:  22.    Watchet  weeds.     Blue  clothes. 

20 :  28.  disfigurements  in  Dante.  Reference  to  The  Inferno^ 
Dante  Alighieri  (1265-1321). 

21 :  4.    Ultima  Supplicia.     Extreme  punishments. 

21 :  15.  San  Benito.  So  called  because  it  was  "  of  the  same  cut 
as  that  worn  by  the  members  of  the  Order  of  St.  Benedict."  The 
garment  worn  by  persons  under  trial  by  the  Inquisition,  at  an 
auto-da-f6. 

21 :  26.  James  Boyer.  Leigh  Hunt  refers  to  Boyer  as  "famous 
for  the  mention  of  him  by  Lamb  and  Coleridge."  His  account  of 
Boyer's  severity  agrees  with  Lamb's.    Coleridge  wrote  of  Boyer  in 


NOTES  347 

t 

^^  his  Biographia  Literaria,  as  a  "very  sensible,  though  at  the  same 
time  a  very  severe,  master  "  ;  and  represents  himself  as  owing 
much  to  "his  zealous  and  conscientious  tutorage." 

21 :  38.  like  a  dancer.  Shakespeare,  Antony  and  Cleopatra^ 
III.,  ii.,  36.     See  3Irs.  Battle'' s  Opinions  on  Whist,  p.  39. 

22  :  10.  Peter  Wilkins.  The  reference  is  to  The  Life  and  Ad- 
ventures of  Peter  Wilkins,  by  Robert  Paltock,  1751,  two  volumes, 
a  pleasant  romance,  not  unlike  Bohinson  Crusoe. 

22 :  19.  Rousseau  and  Locke.  The  reference  here  is  to  the  sys- 
tems of  education  proposed,  one  by  the  French  philosopher  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau  (1712-1778)  and  the  other  by  the  English  phi- 
losopher John  Locke  (1632-1704).  In  both  these  systems,  the 
"  agreeable  "  had  a  very  prominent  part. 

22 :  29.  Phaedrus.  A  Roman  writer  of  fables  in  the  first  cen- 
tury A.D. 

22 :  35.  Young  Helots.  Helots  were  slaves  whom  Spartan 
parents  made  drunk  in  order  to  exhibit  them  to  their  sons  in 
warning. 

22 :  37.  Sardonic.  "  Bitterly  ironical."  From  "Sardinia  herba," 
"  a  bitter  herb  which  was  said  to  distort  the  face  of  the  eater." 

23  :  2.  The  Samite.  Pythagoras,  a  Greek  philosopher,  born  in 
Samos,  probably  about  582  b.c.  He  taught  the  transmigration  of 
souls.  The  reference  here  is  to  his  enjoining  silence  upon  his 
pupils. 

23 :  3-  Goshen.  That  part  of  Egypt  in  which  the  Israelites  dwelt 
before  the  Exodus  ;  the  only  part  of  the  land  exempt  from  the 
plagues. 

23  :  6.    Gideon's  miracle.     Judges  vi.,  37-40. 

23  :  footnote.  Cowley.  Abraham  Cowley,  an  English  poet  and 
courtier  of  the  seventeenth  century  ;  a  great  favourite  with  Lamb. 

23:13.  Elysian  exemptions.  The  Elysian  Fields  were  "the 
abode  of  the  blessed,  the  happy  hereafter"  of  classic  mythology. 

23 :  16.    Ululantes.     Those  wlio  were  howHng. 


348  NOTES 

23:  17.  Tartarus.  The  infernal  regions  of  classic  mythology, 
the  place  of  torture. 

23 :  20.  scrannel  pipes.  Here  Lamb  borrows  an  expression  used 
by  Milton  In  Lycidas.     Scrannel  means  "squeaking." 

23:  footnote.  Garrick,  David  (1717-1779).  "He  was  a  great 
actor  and  a  successful  manager,  and  enjoyed  the  friendship  of  the 
most  noted  men  of  his  day."  He  went  to  school  to  Dr.  Samuel 
Johnson. 

23:21.  Flaccus.  Quintus  Horatius  Flaccus  (65-8  b.c),  a  great 
Roman  poet  who  lived  in  the  age  of  the  Emperor  Augustus, 
and  wrote  lyrics  and  satires.  He  is  commonly  known  as 
"Horace." 

23:22.  Terence.  Publius  Terentius  Afer  (185-159  b.c),  a 
Roman  comedian. 

23  :  27.  Caxon.  An  obsolete  term  for  a  wig  ;  probably  from  per- 
sonal surname  Caxon. 

25:1.  first  Grecian.  "...  The  Deputy  Grecians  were  in 
Homer,  Cicero,  and  Demosthenes ;  the  Grecians  in  the  Greek 
plays  and  mathematics.  .  .  .  Those  who  became  Grecians  al- 
ways went  to  the  University,  though  not  always  into  the  Church  ; 
which  was  reckoned  a  departure  from  the  contract." — Lbigh 
Hunt,  Autobiography. 

25:14.  Cicero.  Marcus  Tullius  Cicero  (106-43  b.c),  a  cele- 
brated Roman  orator,  philosopher,  and  statesman. 

25 :  24.  mitre.  A  head-dress  worn  by  bishops,  abbots,  and  in 
certain  cases  by  other  distinguished  ecclesiastics,  regni  novitas. 
This  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas  translates  "  infant  realm,"  pointing  out  that 
the  bishopric  of  Calcutta  was  newly  created. 

25 :  26.  Jewel  and  Hooker.  Divines  of  the  Church  of  England, 
and  theological  writers  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

25 :  38.   fiery  column.     See  Exodus  xiii.,  21. 

26 : 5.  Mirandula.  Pico  della  Mirandola,  a  brilliant  young 
Italian  of  the  fifteenth  century. 


NOTES  349 

26 :  7.    Jamblichus,  Plotinus.     Greek  philosophers. 

26 :  8.    Homer,  Pindar.     Greek  poets. 

26:11.  old  Fuller.  Thomas  Fuller  (1608-1661),  an  English 
divine  and  writer.  Author  of  The  History  of  the  Holy  Warre,  His- 
tory of  the  University  of  England,  History  of  the  Worthies  of  Eng- 
land. In  the  last-named  of  these  works  is  the  description  of  the 
"  wit-combats  "  between  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jonson.  C.  V.  Le  G. 
Charles  Valentine  Le  Grice,  an  intimate  friend  of  Lamb's. 

26 :  19.  Allen.  Allen,  Middleton,  the  two  brothers  Le  Grice, 
Favell,  and  Thornton,  are  all  described  by  Leigh  Hunt,  also  in  his 
Autobiography,  where  some  of  these  same  anecdotes  are  repeated. 

26:25.  Nireus  formosus.  "Nireus,  the  most  beauteous  man 
that  came  up  under  Ilios  of  all  the  Danaans,  after  the  noble 
son  of  Peleus." — Iliad,  Bk.  II.  Translation  by  Lang,  Leaf,  and 
Myers. 

THE  TWO   RACES  OF  MEN 

London  Magazine,  December,  1820. 

27 :  10.  Parthians,  Medes,  Elamites.  —  Acts  ii.,  9. 

27 :  13.  port.  Carriage  or  demeanour  (French  ^or^er,  from  Latin 
porto,  "  carry  "). 

27 :  16.  lean  and  suspicious.  Here  Lamb  may  have  had  in  mind 
Shakespeare's  Julius  Ccesar,  I.,  ii.,  194-195  :  — 

*'  Yond  Cassius  has  a  lean  and  hungry  look; 
He  thinks  too  much:  such  men  are  dangerous." 

27:19.  Alcibiades.  An  Athenian  politician  and  general  (450- 
404  B.C.),  a  pupil  of  Socrates  ;  celebrated  for  his  beauty,  his  tal- 
ents, and  his  wilfulness.  Falstaff.  A  witty  old  knight  in  Shake- 
speare's Heiiry  IV.  Sir  Richard  Steele  (1672-1729).  Englisli 
essayist  and  dramatist.  With  Joseph  Addison,  he  started  i\\v.  first 
English  periodical,  The  Spectator. 


350  NOTES 

27:20.  Brinsley.  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  (1751-1816), 
statesman  and  dramatist.  Author  of  the  celebrated  comedies 
The  Bivals  and  Tlie  School  for  Scandal. 

27 :  23.  no  more  thought  than  lilies.     St.  Matthew  vi.,  28. 

27 :  26.   meum  and  tuum.     What  is  mine  and  what  is  thine. 

27 :  27.  Tooke.  Assumed  name  of  John  Home,  politician,  and 
writer  on  philosophy.     Known  as  "  Home  Tooke." 

27  :  30.   primitive  community.  —  Acts  ii.,  44. 

27 :  31.  the  true  taxer  .  .  .  taxed.  A  reference  to  the  decree  of 
Csesar  Augustus,  "that  the  whole  world  should  be  enrolled."  — 
St,  Luke  ii.,  1. 

27 :  34.  obolary.  The  obolus  was  a  coin  of  ancient  Greece, 
worth  about  one  and  halfpence  in  English  money,  —  three  cents 
in  ours;  "obolary"  would  mean  then  "impecunious,"  because 
possessed  only  of  small  coins. 

28:6.  Candlemas.  February  2,  Feast  of  the  Purification  of 
Mary  the  Mother  of  Christ.  Feast  of  Holy  Michael.  September 
29 ;  i.e.  of  St.  Michael  the  Archangel.  These  days  were  "  quarter- 
days,"  "set  seasons"  for  payment. 

28  :  7.  lene  tormentum.  —  Horace,  Odes,  Bk.  III.,  XXI.  "  Thou 
appliest  a  gentle  spur  to  the  usually  ungenial  temper." 

28  :  15.    reversion  promised.  —  Proverbs  xix.,  17. 

28  :  16.  Lazarus  and  Dives.     See  St.  Luke  xvi.,  20-31. 

28:37.  Alexander  IIL,  "The  Great"  (356-323  n.c).  A  fa- 
mous king  of  Macedon,  and  a  great  conqueror,  son  of  Philip  of 
Macedon. 

29  :  28.   Hagar's  offspring.  —  Genesis  xxi. 
29  :  29.    fisc.     A  royal,  or  state,  treasury. 

29  :  34.  cana  fides.  Honour  due  to  gray  hairs.  Virgil,  ^neid, 
I.,  292. 

30  :  2.  mumping.  From  "  mumper,"  a  beggar.  "  Mump,"  "  to 
mumble,  .  .  .  implore  alms  in  a  low  voice." 

30 :  16.   Comberbatch.    Coleridge  is  here  referred  to  by  the  name 


NOTES  '  351 

under  which  he  had  early  in  life  enlisted,  Silas  Titus  Comberbach. 
He  is  referred  to  elsewhere  in  the  essay  as  C,  or  S.  T.  C. 

The  paragraphs  that  follow  on  the  borrowing  and  lending  of 
books  are  paralleled  in  several  amusing  letters  from  Lamb  to 
Wordsworth  and  to  Coleridge.     One  of  these  opens  :  — 

"  Dear  Coleridge  :  Why  will  you  make  your  visits,  which  should 
give  pleasure,  matter  of  regret  to  your  friends?  You  never  come  but 
you  take  away  some  folio  that  is  part  of  my  existence " ;  and 
closes :  "  My  third  shelf  (northern  compartment)  from  the  top  has 
two  devilish  gaps,  where  you  have  knocked  out  its  two  eye-teeth. 

*'  Your  wronged  friend, 

"Charles  Lamb." 

30  :  20.  Switzer-like.  As  large  as  the  tall  Swiss  who  make  up 
the  "Swiss  Guard."  This  name  originally  belonged  to  Swiss  mer- 
cenary troops  in  the  service  of  the  French  ;  it  is  now  given  to  the 
guard  of  the  Pope.  Guild-hall  giants.  Guild-hall,  the  old  "coun- 
cil-hall of  the  city  of  London,  founded  1411,  and  restored  after  the 
fire  of  1666."  The  giants  are  great  wooden  figures,  known  as  Gog 
and  Magog,  which  stood  originally  at  the  door,  "guardant,"  then, 
of  the  entrance. 

30  :  22.  Opera  Bonaventurae.     The  works  of  St.  Bonaventura. 

30  :  24.  Bellarmine,  Holy  Thomas.  Koberto  Bellarmino  (1542- 
1621),  an  Italian  cardinal  and  Jesuit  theologian.  St.  Thomas  of 
Aquino,  or  "  Aquinas."  A  Dominican  and  a  famous  Italian  theolo- 
gian of  the  thirteenth  century. 

30  :  25.  Ascapart.  A  legendary  giant  thirty  feet  high.  He 
i  figures  in  the  English  romance  "  Bevis  of  Hampton,"  and  is  men- 
tioned by  many  Elizabethan  writers. 

30  :  34.  whilom.  Once,  formerly,  or,  at  times.  Anglo-Saxon, 
hivilum. 

31  : 1.  Dodsley's  dramas.  Robert  Dodsley  in  the  eighteenth 
century  edited  a  collection  of  "  Old  English  Plays  "  ;  among  these 
was  the  Vittoria  Corombona  of   John   Webster,  a  famous  Eng- 


352  NOTES 

lish  dramatist  of  the  seventeentli  century,  who  wrote  tragedy. 
See  Lamb's  Dramatic  Specimens. 

31  :  3.    Refuse.     Rejected,  not  remembered,  or  considered. 

31  : 4.  Anatomy  of  Melancholy.  By  Robert  Burton  (1577- 
1640),  a  curious  work  treating  of  the  causes  and  symptoms  of 
melancholy,  and  of  its  cure  ;  often  referred  to  by  Lamb. 

31  :  5.  Complete  Angler.  By  Izaak  Walton  (1593-1683),  known 
as  the  "  Father  of  Angling."  This  book  Lamb  says  was  the  delight 
of  his  childhood.  He  calls  it,  in  1819,  "  so  old  a  darling  of  mine  "; 
and  writes  to  Wordsworth  once,  "  Izaak  Walton  hallows  any  page 
in  which  his  revered  name  appears." 

31  :  6.  John  Buncle.  A  romance  by  Thomas  Amory,  published 
1756  and  1766.  A  favourite  with  Lamb,  and  with  his  friend 
William  Hazlitt.  The  hero  of  the  book  married  seven  times,  after 
very  short  intervals. 

31 :  18.  Deodands.  A  deodand  was  anything  forfeited  to  the 
crown,  to  be  applied  to  pious  uses. 

31  :  27.  Margaret  Newcastle.  "The  Life  of  the  Thrice  Noble, 
High  and  Puissant  Prince,  William  Cavendish,  and  Earl  of  New- 
castle ;  by  the  Thrice  Noble,  Illustrious,  and  Excellent  Princess, 
Margaret,  Duchess  of  Newcastle,  his  Wife."  See  Introduction, 
p.  xix. 

32 : 4.  Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brooke.  A  poet  and  statesman. 
He  composed  his  own  epitaph,  which  reads:  "Fulke  Greville,  ser- 
vant to  Queen  Elizabeth,  councillor  to  King  James,  and  friend  to 
Sir  Philip  Sidney." 

32  :  7.  Zimmerman.  Johann  George  Zimmerman,  a  Swiss  phy- 
sician and  philosophical  writer.  Author  of  fiber  die  Einsamkeit, 
"  On  Solitude,"  1755. 

32  :  16.  Daniel.  Samuel  Daniel.  An  English  poet,  contempo- 
rary with  Edmund  Spenser,  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  It 
has  been  suggested  that  his  sister,  Rose  Daniel,  was  the  Rosalinde 
of  Spenser's  Shepherd's  (7aZe«dar,  her  name  expressed  in  anagi-am. 


NOTES  353 

NEW  YEAR'S  EVE 

London  Magazine,  January,  1821. 

Id  his  notes  (p.  329)  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas  quotes  a  commentary  on 
this  essay,  by  Horace  Smith  (one  of  the  authors  of  Bejected  Ad- 
dresses), printed  anonymously  in  the  London  Magazine,  March, 
1821.    Part  of  it  reads  as  follows  :  — 

"Ha!  I  exclaimed,  thou  art  the  very  Janus  who  hast  always 
delighted  in  antithetical  presentments  ;  who  lovest  to  exhibit  thy 
tragic  face  in  its  most  doleful  gloom,  that  thou  mayst  incontinently 
turn  upon  us  the  sunshine  of  thy  comic  smile.  —  Thou  wouldst  not 
paint  the  miseries  endured  by  a  friendless  boy  at  Christ's  without 
a  companion  piece,  portraying  the  enjoyments  of  a  more  fortunate 
youngster."  See  Introduction,  p.  xxi,  for  further  comment  on 
the  humour  of  this  essay. 

33  :  5.  a  contemporary.  Coleridge,  in  his  Ode  on  tlie  Departing 
year. 

33  :  30.  Alice  W n.     See  Introduction,  p.  xii. 

34 :  22.  God  help  thee,  Elia,  etc.  Compare  the  exclamation  of 
Quince  in  Shakespeare's  3Iidsummer  NighVs  Dream,  III.,  i., 121-122. 

35  :  14.   Audits.    Periodical  settlement,  or  rendering  of  accounts. 

35  :  20.   like  a  weaver's  shuttle.     Job  vii.,  6. 

35 :  23.  Reluct.  To  exhibit  reluctance,  to  struggle  against. 
Obsolete  or  archaic. 

35  :  33.  Lavinian  shores.  When  ^Eneas  fled  from  Troy  he 
settled  upon  the  Lavinian  shore  in  Italy.  See  the  opening  lines 
of  Virgil's  ^neid.  Compare  with  this  paragraph  the  letter  to 
Coleridge  quoted  on  p.  xiii  of  Introduction. 

36  :  15.    Burgeon.    To  bud,  to  grow,  to  flourish.     Poetical. 

36  :  21.  sickly  sister.  The  moon,  Diana,  sister  of  Phabus 
Apollo  the  sun-god. 

36 :  22.  io  the  Canticles.  Solomon's  Canticle  of  Canticles, 
Cb    VIII. 

2x 


354  XOTES 

36  :  2o.  the  Persian.  Zoroaster,  founder  of  the  national  reli- 
gion of  Persia,  in  which  "the  elements, — earth,  air,  fire,  and 
water,  but  especially  fire,  receive  homage  as  creations  of  Ahuram- 
azda,"  "the  supreme  god  of  light." 

37  :  16.  Mr.  Cotton.  Charles  Cotton,  a  contemporary  of  Wal- 
ton ;  he  wrote  a  continuation  of  the  Complete  Angler. 

38 :  40.  Spa.  A  fashionable  seventeenth-century  watering- 
place. 

MRS.   BATTLE'S   OPINIONS  ON   WHIST 

London  Magazine,  February,  1821. 

Mrs.  Battle  has  been  compared  with  Lamb's  "grandam," 
described     in     "Dream-Children,"     and     in      "Blakesmoor     in 

H shire."     It  has  also  been  suggested  that  she  was  intended 

for  ]Mrs.  Burney,  — wife  of  Lamb's  friend  Admiral  James  Burney. 
But  Barry  Cornwall  says  that  Mrs.  Battle  was  an  imaginary  per- 
son, and  in  this  Canon  Ainger  follows  him.  Admiral  Burney  was 
the  brother  of  Fanny  Burney  (Madame  d'Arblay,  author  of  Eve- 
lina).   He  and  his  son  Martin  were  dear  friends  of  Lamb. 

40  :  7.  Pope.  Alexander  Pope  (1688-1744),  the  greatest  name 
in  the  classical  school  of  English  poetry  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Author  of  many  great  satires  and  epistles  in  verse,  of  The  Essay  on 
Criticism,  The  Essay  on  Man,  and  of  the  brilliant  mock-heroic 
poem  here  referred  to.  The  Bape  of  the  Lock. 

40: 13.  Mr.  Bowles.  William  Lisle  Bowles  (1762-1850),  an 
English  poet,  whose  sonnets  Lamb  and  Coleridge  greatly  admired. 

40  :  21.   Spadille.     The  ace  of  spades. 

40  :  25.  Sans  Prendre  Vole.  Playing  without  a  partner,  to  take 
all  the  tricks. 

40:86.  Machiavel.  Niccolo  Machiavelli  (Mak-i-a-vel'li)  (1469- 
1527),  a  celebrated  Italian  statesman  and  author. 

41 :  31.  clear  Vandykes.  Sir  Anthony  Van  Dyke,  or  Van  Dyck 
(1599-1641).  a  famous  Flemish  painter.  Court  painter  to  Charles 
I.  of  England. 


NOTES  355 

41  :  32.   Paul  Potters.    Paul  Potter  (1625-1654),  a  noted  Dutch 
portrait  painter,  and  painter  of  animals. 

41  :  38.    Pam.     The  knave  of  clubs. 

42  :  18.   old  Walter  Plumer.    See  "  South-Sea  House,"  p.  7. 

45 :  2.   Bridget  Elia.    The  name  by  which  Lamb  refers  to  his 

sister,  Mary  Lamb,  in  his  essays. 

45  :  16.   capotted.     "  To  capot"  means  "to  win  all  the  cards." 
45 :  24.   ever  playing.     Mr.  G.  A.  Wauchope,  in  his  notes  to  this 

essay,  suggests  here  a  parallel  with  the  idea  of  "arrested  life"  in 

Keats's  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn. 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS 

London  3Ia,gazine,  March,  1821. 

46:1.  Defoe.  Daniel  Defoe  (1661-1731),  English  novelist  and 
political  writer  ;  he  had  his  ears  cropped,  and  was  placed  in  the 
pillory  for  writing  a  certain  political  pamphlet.  He  was  the  author 
of  the  famous  novel,  Bohinson  Crusoe. 

46:19.    Alice  W n.     See  Introduction,  p.  xii. 

47 :  9.  Sostenuto  ;  adagio.  Directions  for  musical  time,  mean- 
ing "prolonged,"  slowly. 

47:  11.    Baralipton.     A  term  used  in  logic. 

47:14.    Jubal.     Genesis  iv.,  21. 

48 : 4.  Hades.  The  underground  kingdom  of  Pluto  in  classic 
mythology. 

48 :  8.  Party  in  a  parlour,  etc.  Lines  which  stood  in  Words- 
worth's Feter  Bell;  later  omitted. 

48:  12.  long  a-dying.  King  Charles  II.  on  his  death-bed  begged 
his  courtiers  to  excuse  him  for  being  "so  unconscionable  a  time 
in  dying." 

48:20.  Mime.  From  a  Greek  work  meaning  "to  imitate,"  an 
imitation,  a  dramatic  entertainment. 


356  NOTES 

48 :  26.  disappointing  book  in  Patmos.  Apocalypse  (Revela- 
tions) X.,  10. 

49:7.  subrusticus  pudor.  "Awkward  baslifulness,"  from  the 
Letters  of  Cicero. 

49:  16.    Nov- .     Lamb's  friend  Vincent  Novello,  a  musician 

and  composer.  It  was  to  bis  daughter  Clara  that  Lamb  addressed 
some  verses  first  published  in  the  Athencexim^  July  26,  and  be- 
ginning :  — 

**  The  gods  have  made  me  most  unmusical." 

49 :  23,  25,   that  ...  or  that  other.     Psalms  liv.  and  xviii. 

50 : 2.  Arion.  A  famous  musician  of  Greek  legend,  forced  by 
mariners  who  wished  to  rob  him  to  cast  himself  overboard.  But 
the  beauty  of  his  music  had  brought  round  the  vessel  a  crowd  of 
dolphins,  one  of  whom  carried  him  to  land  on  its  back. 

50 : 3.  Haydn,  etc.  Joseph  Haydn  and  Wolfgang  Amadeus 
Mozart,  Austrian  musicians  and  composers  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Tritons.  Water  deities  of  classic  mythology.  Bach,"  etc. 
Johann  Sebastian  Bach  (1685-1750),  Ludwigvan  Beethoven  (1770- 
1827),  German  musicians  and  composers. 

50 :  9.  triple  tiara.  A  cylindrical  head-dress  pointed  at  the  top 
and  surrounded  with  three  crowns ;  worn  by  the  Pope  as  a  symbol 
of  sovereignty,  and  replaced  by  the  mitre  at  ceremonies  of  a  purely 
spiritual  character. 

50 :  13.  malleus  hereticorum.  "  Hammer  of  Heretics,"  surname 
of  a  German,  Johann  Faber,  who  vehemently  opposed  the  Refor- 
mation,    heresiarch.     Leader  of  a  heresy. 

50 :  14.  Marcion,  etc.  Reference  to  the  founders  of  three  hereti- 
cal sects  in  the  early  centuries  of  the  Christian  era. 

50 :  15.  Gog  and  Magog.  Referred  to  in  Apocalypse  (Revela- 
tions) XX.,  7-9,  as  the  enemies  who  shall  fight  against  the  Church 
towards  the  end  of  the  world. 


NOTES  357 


ALL  FOOLS'   DAY 


London  Magazine.     Dated  at  end  of  the  essay,  1st  April,  1821. 

50 :  31.  He  that  meets  me,  etc.  Reference  to  the  meeting  of 
Jacques  with  Touchstone  the  Jester,  Shakespeare's  As  You  Like 
It,  XL,  vii.,  12. 

50 :  32.    Stultus  sum.     I  am  a  fool. 

51:6.  catch.  "In  music  originally  an  unaccompanied  round 
for  three  or  more  voices,  written  as  a  continuous  melody."  Look 
for  this  song  in  As  You  Like  It,  IL,  v. 

51 :  10.    Give  him.     Toast  him. 

51 :  14.    Dust  away.     Dust,  to  strike  or  beat. 

The  lines  from  Paradise  Lost  appended  as  footnotes  in  the  Lon- 
don Magazine,  and  here  to  the  names  Empedocles,  Cleombrotus, 
and  Gehir,  were  omitted  in  the  1823  edition. 

51 :  24.  Calenturists.  Sufferers  from  "  calenture  "  ;  in  his  de- 
lirium the  patient  fancies  the  sea  to  be  green  fields,  and  wishes  to 
leap  into  it. 

51 :25.  Gebir  is  not  a  Scriptural  character;  it  was  Lamb's  idea 
to  connect  him  with  the  building  of  the  tower  of  Babel.  Gebir, 
or  Geber,  was  an  Arabian  alchemist  of  the  eighth  century.  A  poem 
Gebir  was  written  by  the  English  poet,  Walter  Savage  Landor; 
the  hero  of  this  is  a  prince  of  Spain. 

52 :  13.  Master  Raymund  Lully.  An  alchemist  of  the  thirteenth 
century. 

52 :  15.  Duns.  Duns  Scotus,  a  learned  monk  of  the  thirteenth 
century. 

52 :  20-4.  Stephen,  Cokes,  Aguecheek,  Shallow,  Silence,  Slen- 
der. Reference  to  famous  simpletons  in  literature  ;  the  first  two 
in  plays  by  Ben  Jonson  (1573-1637),  poet  and  dramatist,  the  con- 
temporary and  friend  of  Shakespeare ;  the  next  four  in  plays  by 
Shakespeare. 

52 :  35.    King  Pandion,  etc.     Lines  from  To  a  Nightingale,  by 


358  NOTES 

Richard  Barufield.  To  be  found  in  Palgrave's  Golden  Treasunj. 
Pandion,  king  of  Athens,  was  the  father  of  Philomela  in  Greek 
legend,  who  was  changed  into  a  nightingale. 

52:38.  Quisada.  Don  Quixote  (ke-ho'te)  de  la  Mancha,  the 
Spanish  gentleman  who  sets  forth  with  his  squire  Sancho  Panza  to 
seek  knightly  adventures ;  hero  of  the  romance  by  Miguel  de  Cer- 
vantes, published,  Part  I.,  1605,  Part  II.,  1615. 

53:9.    Malvolian  smile.      Shakespeare's  Twelfth  Xight.  III.,  iv. 

53 :  10.  Gay.  John  Gay,  an  English  poet  and  dramatist  con- 
temporary with  Pope. 

54 :  5.   white  boys.     Favourites. 


A  QUAKER'S  MEETING 

London  Magazine.,  April,  1821. 

Throughout  Lamb's  letters  there  are  evidences  of  his  interest  in 
the  Quakers,  and  of  his  liking  for  much  in  their  spirit  and  attitude. 
One  of  his  friendships,  to  which  we  owe  many  delightful  letters, 
was  with  Bernard  Barton,  the  Quaker  poet.  His  charming  poem, 
To  Hester.,  was  written  to  the  memory  oi  a  young  Quakeress 
whom  he  knew  merely  by  sight,  in  Pentonville. 

54 :  31.  thy  casements.  A  reminiscence  perhaps  of  Shylock's 
words  in  Shakespeare's  Merchant  of  Venice.,  II.,  v.,  34. 

**  But  stop  ray  house's  ears,  I  mean  my  casements." 

54:33.  self -mistrusting  Ulysses.  Who  stopped  his  own  ears, 
and  those  of  his  crew,  with  wax,  lest  they  might  be  unable  to  re- 
sist the  song  of  the  Sirens. 

55:19.  The  Carthusian.  The  Carthusian  order  of  monks, 
founded  by  St.  Bruno  in  1086,  took  their  name  from  the  valley  in 
which  they  first  settled,  La  Chartreuse.  Their  monasteries  were 
thence  called  "Chartreuses,"  corrupted  in  English  to   "Charter 


IfOTES  359 

House."  The  order  was  characterized  by  rigorous  austerity  and 
self-discipline. 

56:15.    Fox.     George  Fox,  founder  of  the  society  of  Friends. 

56 :  25.  Penn.  William  Penn,  a  Friend  who  received  the  gTant 
of  Pennsylvania,  and  founded  Philadelphia,  the  Quaker  City,  1682. 
Both  Fox  and  Penn  were  arrested  in  England  under  the  Conven- 
ticle Act. 

56 :  32.  Wesley.  John  Wesley  (1703-1791),  English  divine,  and 
founder  of  Methodism. 

57 :  12.  John  Woolman.  An  American  Friend,  born  in  New 
Jersey,  1720.     His  Journal  was  a  great  favourite  with  Lamb. 

57 :  36.    Orgasm.     Excitement. 

58 :  16.  Dis.  Pluto,  god  of  the  underworld.  The  Loves  playing 
with  Proserpina  fled  at  the  approach  of  Dis,  who  carried  her  away 
from  the  Vale  of  Enna  to  Tartarus  (see  Notes,  p.  348). 

58 :  22.  Trophonius.  An  oracle  in  Bceotia  ;  it  returned  answers 
which  made  those  who  consulted  it  melancholy  and  dejected. 

58  :  36.  Whitsun-conferences.  Yearly  meetings  of  the  Friends. 
Whitsun,  or  Whit-Sunday,  the  common  name  in  England  for  Pente- 
cost, meaning  White  Sunday  ;  possibly  a  reference  to  the  white 
robe  of  baptism,  since  baptism  was  for  many  ages  administered  at 
Easter  and  at  Pentecost. 

58 :  38.  the  Shining  Ones.  A  term  borrowed  from  Bunyan's 
Pilgrini's  Progress. 

Compare  with  the  sentiment  of  this  closing  paragraph,  the  lines 
written  by  Lamb  for  the  album  of  Bernard  Barton's  daughter. 
The  last  stanza  reads :  — 

"  Whitest  thoughts,  in  whitest  dress, 
Candid  meanings,  best  express 
Mind  of  quiet  Quakeress." 

With  this  essay,  compare  Lamb's  letter  to  Coleridge,  February 
13,  1797,  in  which  he  writes  that  he  has  been  attracted  to  "  a  most 


360  NOTES 

capital  book,  good  thoughts  in  good  language,  William  Ji'enn's 
No  Cross^  No  Crowns 

THE   OLD   AND   THE  NEW   SCHOOL-MASTER 

London  Magazine^  May,  1821. 

59 :  8.   Ortelius.     A  Flemish  geographer  of  the  sixteenth  centmy 

59:31.  a  better  man.  Shakespeare.  See  Ben  Jonson's  iinf's 
to  the  Memory  of  my  Beloved  Master  William  Shakespeare  and 
What  he  hath  left  Us.  ' '  And  though  thou  hadst  small  Latin  and 
less  Greek." 

62: 12.   Lily,  Linacre.     Scholars  of  the  time  of  Shakespeare. 

62:23.  Flori,  Spici-legia.  Anthologies  —  of  flowers  and  spices, 
as  it  were. 

62 :  25-8.  Basileus,  Pamela,  Philoclea.  Mopsa,  Damoetas.  Char, 
acters  in  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  pastoral  Arcadia. 

62:27.  Tyro.  A  novice.  From  Latin  tiro,  a  newly  \evied 
soldier. 

62 :  29.   Colet.     John  Colet,  founder  of  St.  Paul's  School,  1512. 

63 : 1.   Solon,  Lycurgus.     An  Athenian  and  a  Spartan  legislator. 

63 :  22.    cum  multis  aliis.     With  many  others. 

63 :  24.    Tractate.     By  Milton. 

63  :  31.  mollia  tempora  fandi.  Virgil's  ^neid,  lY.,  29:3-294,  "  et 
quae  mollissima  tempora  fandi."  And  what  were  the  most  favour- 
able times  for  speech. 

valentint:'s  day 

Published  first  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Examiner,  1819  ;  republished  in 
his  Indicator,  February  14,  1821,  signed  with  four  stars.  Here  it 
forms  part  of  an  article,  "Donne's  and  Drayton's  Lines  on  Valen- 
tine's Day,  with  remarks." 

67 : 4.  Opening  line.  From  a  poem  by  John  Donne,  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  beginning  "  Hail,  Bishop  Valentine  1 " 


NOTES  361 

St.  Valentine,  a  Roman  Christian,  was  martyred  February  14, 
270.  He  was  not  a  bishop.  As  his  feast-day  immediately  preceded 
that  of  the  goddess  Juno  during  the  Roman  Lupercalia,  some  of  the 
heathen  customs  were  continued  as  if  in  his  honour ;  so  he  became 
associated  with  the  choice  of  lovers  on  this  day. 

67 :  5.  rubric.  Lamb  uses  the  word  here  to  mean  direction  from 
the  Church. 

67 : 5.  flamen.  In  the  ancient  Roman  religion,  a  priest 
devoted  to  the  service  of  one  particular  deity.  Archflamen.  A 
high  priest. 

67 :  6.  Hymen.     The  classic  god  of  marriage. 

67 :  10.  rochet.  A  linen  vestment  proper  only  to  bishops  and 
abbots,     decent.     Suitable  or  seemly. 

67 : 1 2.  Mitred  father  .  .  .  Jerome,  Ambrose,  Cyril.  St.  Am- 
brose and  St.  Cyril  were  bishops  in  the  early  centuries  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  St.  Jerome,  a  "  Father  of  the  Church,"  translated  the  Bible 
into  Latin  ;  his  is  the  Vulgate  Version. 

67 :  14.  Austin.  English  name  of  St.  Augustine,  bishop  of 
Hippo.     Author  of  the   Confessions  and  of  The  City  of  God. 

67:  15.  Origen.  One  of  the  Greek  fathers  of  the  Church  in  the 
third  century. 

67:  16.  Bull,  Parker,  Whitgift.  Bishops  of  the  English  Church 
in  the  seventeenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

67: 18.   Brushed  .  .  .  wings.     Line  from  Paradise  Lost,  I.,  768. 

67:  20.  crosier.  Or  pastoral  staff,  given  to  a  bishop  at  the  time 
of  his  consecration,  as  a  symbol  of  authority. 

67 :  23.  ycleped.  Also  yclept.  Past  participle  of  the  old  verb 
"  clepe,"  meaning  "  called."     Used  now  only  archaically. 

67  :  24.    forspent.     Exhausted  by  overexertion. 

68 :  21.  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan.  Shakespeare,  Macbeth,  I.,  v., 
39-40. 

68:34.  a  madrigal.  "A  mediaeval  poem  or  song,  amorous, 
pastoral,  or  descriptive." 


362  NOTES 

6g:21.  Ovid.  Publius  Ovidius  Naso,  a  Roman  poet  of  the 
Augustan  age.  The  stories  of  the  lovers  here  referred  to  are  to  be 
found  in  his.  Metamorphoses  and  in  his  Heroides.  or  stories  of 
heroines  who  have  perished  for  love. 

69:23.  Pyramus  and  Thisbe.  "The  handsomest  youth"  and 
*'the  fairest  maiden  in  all  Babylonia."  Their  parents  forbade 
their  marrying,  but  they  conversed  with  each  other  through  a  gap 
in  the  wall  between  their  houses.  Dido,  queen  of  Carthage,  killed 
herself  for  love  of  ^neas.     See  Virgil's  u-Eneid. 

69 :  24.  Hero  and  Leander.  Leander  swam  the  Hellespont  to 
visit  his  love.  Hero  of  Sestos.  One  night  he  was  drowned,  and 
Hero  cast  herself  into  the  sea  in  despair.  Cayster.  A  river  in 
Ionia,  the  fabled  resort  of  swans. 

69 :  26.     Iris.     The  rainbow. 

70 : 3.   sings  poor  Ophelia.    Shakespeare,  Hamlet,  IV. ,  v. 


IMPERFECT  SYI\IPATHIES 

London  Magazine,  August,  1821.  The  original  title  was,  Jeu^s, 
Quakers,  Scotchmen,  and  Other  Imperfect  Sympathies. 

70: 18.  admired.  Here  Lamb  uses  the  word  in  its  original  sense, 
"to  wonder  at"  (Latin,  admirari). 

71 :  10.  anti-Caledonian.  Caledonia  was  the  old  Roman  name 
for  Scotland. 

71 :  footnote,  old  Heywood.  Thomas  Heywood,  an  actor,  and  a 
famous  English  dramatist  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

72:16.  bom  in  panoply.  Minerva  (Greek.  Pallas  Athene),  the 
Roman  goddess  of  wisdom,  sprang  from  the  head  of  Jupiter  com- 
pletely armed. 

73:13.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  (1452-1519).  A  famous  Italian 
painter. 

73  =  29.    Burns.     Robert  Burns  (1759-1796),  a  famous  Scottish 


NOTES  363 

lyric  poet.  "  The  poet  of  homely  human  nature,  not  half  so  homely 
or  prosaic  as  it  seems." 

73  :  34.  Swift.  Jonathan  Swift  (1667-1745),  a  celebrated  Eng- 
lish satirist  and  man  of  letters.  His  most  popular  satire  is  Gul- 
liver''s  Travels. 

74 :  10.  Thomson.  James  Thomson,  a  British  poet  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  born  in  Scotland.  Author  of  The  Seasons,  The 
Castle  of  Indolence,  etc.     He  did  not  write  in  the  Scotch  dialect. 

74:  11.  Smollett.  Tobias  George  Smollett,  a  British  novelist  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  born  in  Scotland.  Author  of  Boderick 
Bandom,  here  referred  to,  and  of  Humphrey  Clinker. 

74 :  14.  Hume.  David  Hume,  a  Scottish  philosopher  and  his- 
torian of  the  eighteenth  century. 

74 :  18.  Stonehenge.  A  prehistoric  monument  in  Salisbury 
Plain,  Wiltshire,  England. 

74:19.  Nonage.  I.e.  non-age,  not-age.  "The  period  of  legal 
infancy,"  minority. 

74:  23.  Hugh  of  Lincoln.  According  to  legend,  this  little  Chris- 
tian boy  was  put  to  death  by  the  Jews.  The  ballad  telling  his 
story  may  be  found  in  Percy's  Reliques  of  Ancient  Bomance 
Poeti-y.  The  legend  is  the  subject  of  one  of  Chaucer's  Canterbury 
Tales,  told  by  the  Prioresse. 

75:  13.    B.     John  Braham,  tenor  singer  and  composer. 

75 :  17.  the  Shibboleth.  By  their  pronouncing  the  word  Schibbo- 
leth  as  "Sibboleth"  the  Ephraimites  betrayed  themselves  to  their 
enemies  the  Galaadites,  who  had  put  them  to  this  test.  Judges 
xii.,  5-6. 

75:23.  Kemble.  John  Philip  Kemble,  a  celebrated  English 
tragedian,  the  brother  of  the  celebrated  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  uncle  of 
Fanny  Kemble. 

75  :  31.   Jael.    The  Israelite  woman  who  slew  Sisera.    Judges  iv. 

76:7.  Desdemona.  The  wife  of  the  Moor  in  Shakespeare's 
Othello. 


364  NOTES 

76:13.  John  Evelyn.  An  English  author  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  His  memoirs  (including  his  letters  and  his  diary)  are 
especially  famous. 

AVith  the  close  of  this  essay  compare  Lamb's  letter  to  Bernard 
Barton,  March  11,  1823.  "  The  Quaker  incident  did  not  happen  to 
me,  but  to  Carlisle  the  surgeon"  ;  i.e.  Sir  Anthony  Carlisle.  The 
anecdote,  Talfourd  says,  "had  excited  some  gentle  remonstrance 
on  the  part  of  Barton's  sister." 


WITCHES  AND  OTHER  NIGHT  FEARS 

London  Magazine.,  October,  1821. 

78 :  30.  Corn  was  lodged.  Beaten  down.  See  Shakespeare, 
Macbeth,  VI.,  i.,  55,  and  Fdchard  II.,  III.,  iii.,  161-163. 

"We'll  make  foul  weather  with  despised  tears; 
Our  sighs  and  they  shall  lodge  the  summer  corn, 
Aud  make  a  dearth  in  this  revolting  land." 

79 :  4-9.  Eld.  Old  age.  Obsolete  and  poetical  in  all  uses.  Assert 
his  metaphor.  To  bespeak,  or  bear  evidence  of,  it.  This  meaning 
of  "  assert"  is  obsolete. 

79:23.  Prosper©.     The  magician  in  Shakespeare's  7Vmyj>e8«. 

79:28.  Spenser.  Edmund  Spenser  (1552-1508),  one  of  the 
greatest  English  poets.  Author  of  the  Faerie  Queene,  The  Shep- 
heardes  Calendar.,  Prothalamion,  Epithalamion,  and  the  Amoretti. 
Guyon.  The  knight  who  personifies  Temperance.,  and  is  put  to  the 
test  by  the  treasures  in  the  cave  of  Mammon  in  Bk.  II,,  Canto  VII. 
of  the  Faerie  Queene. 

79 :  30.  Take  assay.     To  test. 

80 :  20.  Monster.  Slain  by  St.  George  in  the  person  of  the  Red- 
Cross  Knight.     Faerie  Queene,  Bk.  I. 


^'OTES  365 

82 : 9.  T.  H.  Thornton  Hunt,  son  of  Lamb's  intimate  friend, 
Leigh  Hunt  (see  Introduction,  p.  xiv).  This  was  the  passage 
chosen  by  Southey  for  quotation  in  his  attack  on  Hunt  in  the 
Quarterly.     See  Introduction,  p.  xvii. 

82 :  20.  Gorgons,  etc.  Gorgons,  three  sisters  in  Greek  mythology, 
typifying  the  terrors  of  the  sea.  Medusa,  the  most  frightful,  whose 
locks  were  serpents,  was  slain  by  Perseus.  The  Hydra  was  a  nine- 
headed  monster  slain  by  Hercules.  The  Chimasra  was  a  fire- 
breathing  monster,  part  lion,  part  goat,  part  dragon,  slain  by 
Bellerophon  mounted  on  Pegasus.  Calaeno.  The  names  of  the 
harpies  were  Calfeno,  ^-Ello,  Ocypete. 

82 :  22.  Archetype.  The  original  model  from  which  copies  are 
made. 

83 :  37.  nereids.     Sea-nymphs  in  classic  mythology. 

84:  12.  Ino  Leucothea.  The  "white  goddess."  A  mortal  who 
sprang  into  the  sea  to  escape  her  mad  husband,  and  was  made  a 
goddess.  Compare  Milton's  lines  on  the  sea-deities  at  the  close  of 
Comiis. 

MY  RELATIONS 

London  Magazine.,  June,  1821. 

85  :  14.  Thomas  a  Kempis.  A  German.  Superior  of  an  Augus- 
tiiiiau  convent  in  the  lifteenth  century.  Author  of  The  Imitation., 
or  FoUoicing  of  Christ. 

86:  7.  James  Elia.  The  name  by  which  Lamb  always  refers  to 
his  brother  (Introduction,  p.  x)  in  his  essays. 

86 :  17.  Yorick  .  .  .  Shandean.  Yorick  is  a  character  in  Tris- 
tram Shamhj,  by  Lawrence  Sterne  (1713-1768),  a  celebrated  Eng- 
lish novelist  and  humourist.  He  was  the  author  also  of  A  Senti- 
mental Journey  through  France  and  Italy. 

87:2.  Domenichino  (Do-men-e-ke'no)  (1581-1041).  A  cele- 
brated Italian  artist. 


366  HOTES 

87 :  8.  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden.  Famous  soldier  and  conqueror 
of  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

"  He  left  the  name  at  which  the  world  grew  pale, 
To  paint  a  moral,  or  adorn  a  tale." 

—  Samuel  Johnson,  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes. 

87:9.  Upon  instinct.  "Instinct  is  a  great  matter;  I  was  a 
coward  now  upon  instinct."  Falstaff  in  Henry  IV.,  Part  I.,  II., 
iv.,  300. 

87: 14.  Cham  of  Tartary.  Cham,  or  Khan,  the  title  of  sovereign 
princes  of  Tartar  countries.     Used  here  to  signify  a  despot. 

88 :  9.  His  lungs  shall  crow,  etc. 

**  Jacques.  .  .  .  When  I  did  hear 

The  motley  fool  thus  moral  on  the  time, 
My  lungs  began  to  crow  like  chanticleer." 

—  Shakespeare,  As  Tou  Like  It,  II.,  vii.,  29-30. 

88:  12.  Compare  with  this  Thomas  Gray's  comment  at  the  close 
of  his  Ode  on  a  Distant  Frospect  of  Eton  College. 

88:  22.  Claude,  etc.  Claude  Lorrain,  a  celebrated  French  land- 
scape painter,  and  Hobbima  (Hob'be-ma),  a  Dutch  landscape 
painter  ;  both  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

89:6.  Raphael.  Raffaello  Sanzio,  or  Santi  (1483-1520),  a 
celebrated  Italian  painter. 

89:10.  Caracci  (Kar-ra'che),  Annibale,  and  Lodovico,  cousins. 
Italian  painters  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Lodovico  Carracci  was 
a  famous  teacher,  and  the  founder  of  the  Bolognese  School. 

89 :  12.  Luca  Giordano  (Jor-da'no)  and  Carlo  Marratta  (Ma- 
rat'ta),  Italian  painters  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

89:19.  Hallowmass.  Short  for  "  All-hallows-mass,"  or  All 
Saints"  :\Iass-Day.     Feast  of  All  Saints,  November  1. 

90:  22,  Compare  with  the  sentiment  here  expressed.  Lamb's 
satirical  comment  in  a  letter  to  Southey,  on  the  "  Humane  Society, 


NOTES  367 

who  walk  in  procession  once  a  year  with  all  the  objects  of  their 
charity  before  them,  to  return  God  thanks  for  giving  them  such 
benevolent  hearts." 

The  essay  closed  in  the  London  Magazine,  "  Till  then,  farewell, 
Elia." 

MACKEKY   END,    IX   HERTFORDSHIRE 

London  Magazine,  July,  1821. 

91 :  7.  The  rash  king's  offspring.  The  daughter  of  Jepthah,  or 
Jepthe,  ruler  of  the  people  of  Galaad.     Judges  xi.,  30-40. 

92:  24.    Speak  to  it.     "Answer  for,  attest,  account  for." 

92 :  31,  Closet  of  good  old  English  reading.  The  library  of 
Samuel  Salt  (see  Introduction,  p.  xx)  in  the  Temple. 

94 :  2.    The  poet.     William  Wordsworth,  in  Yarrow  Visited. 

94 :  7.    Find  a  parallel  in  this  line  to  Milton's  Comus,  1.  263. 

94 :  38.  The  meeting  of  the  two  scriptural  cousins.  See  St. 
Luke  i.,  39-40. 

95  :  6.  B.  F.  Lamb's  friend  Barron  Field,  whom  he  addresses  in 
Distant  Correspondents. 

MODERN   GALLANTRY 

London  Magazine,  November,  1822. 

96 :  9.  Dorimant.  A  fine  gentleman  in  a  comedy  by  Sir  George 
Etherege,  intended  as  a  portrait  of  the  Earl  of  Rochester,  a  con- 
temporary of  Etherege,  a  poet  and  courtier  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  II. 

97 :  10.    Joseph  Paice.     See  Introduction,  p.  xxi. 

97:  37.    Preux  Chevalier.     A  valiant  knightly  defender. 

97 :  38.  Sir  Calidore.  The  character  in  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene, 
Bk.  VI.,  who  typifies  Courtesy  ;  a  portrait  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney. 
Sir  Tristan,  or  Tristram,  of  Lyonesse,  one  of  the  knights  of  King 
Arthur's  Order  of  the  Round  Table. 


368  NOTES 

99 :1.  discovered.  The  old  use  of  "discover,"  to  mean  "ex- 
hibit." 

THE   OLD   BENCHERS   OF  THE  INNER   TEMPLE 

London  Magazine,  September,  1821. 

"On  the  south  side  of  Fleet  Street,  near  to  where  it  adjoins 
Temple  Bar,  lies  the  Inner  Temple.  .  .  .  About  seven  hundred 
years  ago  it  was  the  abiding  place  of  the  Knights  Templars,  who 
erected  there  a  church,  which  still  uplifts  its  round  tower  (its  sole 
relic)  for  the  wonder  of  modern  times." — Barry  Cornwall, 
Memoir  of  Charles  Lamb. 

Read  the  descriptions  of  the  Temple  and  the  Temple  Gardens  in 
Thackeray's  novel,  Pendennis,  Ch.  XXX.  and  L. 

loo  :  15.   Hight.     Called,  or  named.    Archaic. 

100 :  18.  kindly  engendure.  A  few  lines  above  the  passage  here 
quoted  from  the  Prothalarnion,  Spenser  speaks  of  London,  his 
birthplace,  as  -'my  most  kyndly  nurse." 

100  :  21.  Naiades.  Nymphs  in  classic  mythology,  who  presided 
over  brooks  and  fountains. 

loi  :  18.  Marvell.  Andrew  Marvell,  an  English  poet  and  satir- 
ist of  the  seventeenth  century,  who  assisted  Milton  with  the  Latin 
Secretaryship  of  the  Commonwealth.  Marvell  was  a  great  favourite 
with  Lamb. 

103  :  19.   Elisha  bear.     See  4  Kings  ii.,  23-24:. 

103:34.  Spinous.  Latin  spinosus.  Having  spines,  full  of 
thorns  or  spines,  thorny. 

104  :  3.  Lovel.  Lamb's  own  father,  John  Lamb.  See  Introduc- 
tion, p.  XX. 

105  :  22.  Hie  currus,  etc.  A  reference  to  Virgil's  uEneid,  Bk.  I., 
16-17,  where  Juno  is  described  as  caring  especially  for  Carthage  ; 
"  Here  she  kept  her  arms,  here  her  chariot  of  war." 

105  :  25.    Elwes.     John  Elwes,  a  noted  English  miser. 


NOTES  369 

io6  : 3.  "Flapper."  In  Gulliver'' s  Travels  a  person  who  flaps 
or  strikes  ;  hence  after  Swift,  one  who  jogs  the  memory. 

io6:24.    Prior.     Matthew  Prior  (1664-1721),  an  English  poet. 

io8  :  17.  Friar  Bacon.  Roger  Bacon,  an  Englisli  philosopher  of 
the  thirteenth  century  ;  he  joined  the  order  of  Franciscan  monks. 
He  appears  in  Robert  Greene's  (1560-1592''  comedy.  Friar  Bacon 
ami  Friar  Bung  ay. 

io8  :  35.  Michael  Angelo's  Moses.  Michael  Angelo,  or  Michel- 
angelo, Buonarroti  (1475-156-4),  a  famous  Italian  sculptor,  painter, 
architect,  and  poet. 

io8  :  36.  Baron  Maseres.  See  mention  of  him  in  a  letter  from 
Lamb  to  Manning,  April,  1801. 

log  :  21.    R.  N.     Mr.  Randall  Norris.     See  Introduction,  p.  xii. 

log  :  37.    Wots.     Knows.     Archaic. 

no  :  10.  Hooker.  Theologian  of  the  Church  of  England.  Ap- 
pointed master  of  the  Temple,  1585. 

no  :  16.  Younkers.  Younker,  a  lad,  a  youngster  (German, 
jung  herr). 

no  :  18.  Old  Worthies.  Term  borrowed  from  title  of  Fuller's 
work ;  see  Notes,  p.  349. 

GRACE   BEFORE   MEAT 

London  Magazine,  November,  1821. 

in  :  36.   Rarus  hospes.     An  infrequent  guest. 

113  :26.  Heliogabalus.  Or  Elagabalus,  a  luxurious  Roman  em- 
peror of  the  third  century. 

113  :  33.    Fantasies.     Fancy,  or  imagination. 

115:15.  The  author  of  the  Rambler.  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson. 
See  Notes,  p.  338. 

115  :  26.  Dagon.  A  god  of  the  Philistines  mentioned  in  the  Old 
Testament,  —  half  man  and  half  fish. 

115:35.  Hog's  Norton.  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas  quotes  here  an  old 
2b 


370  NOTES 

pa-overb  :  ''  I  think  thou  wast  born  at  Hoggs-Norton,  where  piggs 
play  upon  the  organs." 

ii6  :  24.  Lucian.  A  Greek  writer  of  the  second  century,  a.d., 
who  satirized  the  religious  beliefs  of  his  time. 

117  :  2.  Non  tunc,  etc.  Paralleled  by  line  19  of  Horace's  Ars 
Poetica,  "  Sed  nunc  non  erat  his  locus."'  Lamb  means,  that  was 
not  the  time  for  such  prayers. 

117 :  11.  Horresco  referens.  Remembering,  or  looking  back  upon 
it,  I  shudder.     Virgil,  ^Eneid,  II.,  204. 

MY   FIRST  PLAY 

London  Magazine,  December,  1821. 

117:16.  Garrick's.  The  Drury  Lane  Theatre  was  opened  in 
1663  ;  it  was  rebuilt  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren.  Garrick  undertook 
the  management  of  it  in  1747. 

118:  22.  Seneca.  Lucius  Ann?eus  Seneca,  a  celebrated  Roman 
Stoic  philosopher  of  the  first  century,  a.d.  Varro.  ^Marcus  Teren- 
tius  Varro,  a  great  Roman  scholar  and  author.  Made  by  Julius 
Caesar  director  of  the  Public  Library, 

118  :  29.   Talismans.     A  talisman  was  a  charm. 

119  :  8.     nonpareils.     A  kind  of  pear. 

119  :  30.  Artaxerxes.  Opera  by  Thomas  Augustine  Arne  ;  the 
libretto  translated  from  the  Artaserse  of  Metastasio,  an  Italian 
lyric  poet  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

120  :  7.  St.  Denys.  The  patron  saint  of  France.  After  he  was 
beheaded  he  arose  and  carried  his  head. 

120  :  14.     Lud.     The  legendary  founder  of  London. 

120  :  15.  dagger  of  lath.  Carried  by  the  Vice  in  the  Old  Moral- 
ity Plays.  See  Shakespeare,  Tv-elfth  Xujht,  IV.,  ii.,  134-138. 
This  character  was  the  forerunner  of  the  jester  and  the  clown  on 
the  English  stage. 

120  :  21.    The  Way  of  the  World.     By  William  Congreve  (1670- 


NOTES  371 

1729).  One  of  the  greatest  writers  of  English  comedy.  Other 
famous  plays  by  him  are  Zore  for  Love  and  The  Mourning  Bride. 
121  :  24.  Mrs.  Siddons  (1755-1831).  Sarah  Kemble,  a  cele- 
brated tragic  actress.  Her  greatest  role  was  Lady  Macbeth.  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  painted  her  as  the  "  Tragic  Muse." 


DREAM-CHILDREN:   A   REVERIE 

London  Magazine,  January,  1822. 

This  essay  was  written  a  few  months  after  the  death  of  Lamb's 
brother,  John  Lamb,  referred  to  in  the  essay  as  John  L.,  elsewhere 
as  James  Elia.     See  Introduction,  p.  x. 

123  :  15.    The  great  house.     See  Blakesmoor  in  II shire. 

125  :  3.   Alice  W — n.     See  Introduction,  p.  xii. 

125  :  17.  Lethe.  One  of  the  rivers  of  the  lower  world  in  classic 
mythology  ;  the  "stream  of  f orgetf ulness. " 

DISTANT   CORRESPONDENTS 

London  Magazine,  March,  1822. 

125 :  22.  B.  F.  Lamb's  friend,  Barron  Field.  There  is  a  parallel 
to  this  letter  in  Lamb's  correspondence  with  Field,  August  31, 
1817  ;  and  there  are  a  number  of  letters,  in  the  same  amusing 
vein,  written  to  Thomas  Manning  (Introduction,  p.  xiii)  during 
his  absence  in  China.  See  one  especially,  dated  December  25, 
1815. 

126:29.  Munden.  Joseph  Shepherd  Munden.  See  essay  On 
the  Acting  of  Munden.  Lamb  speaks  elsewhere  of  his  "wonder- 
working face." 

127:30.    Flam.     Deception. 

128  :  32.  Lustring.  Or  lutestring.  French  lustring,  a  glos.sy  silk 
fabric.    Obsolete. 


372  NOTES 

129:17.    melior  lutus.    Finer  clay. 

129:18.    sol  pater.     Sun  father. 

129 :  36.  Diogenes.  A  Greek  philosopher  of  the  fourth  century, 
B.C.  It  is  said  that  he  sought  with  a  lantern  through  Corinth  for 
an  honest  man.  In  this  passage  Lamb  has  in  mind  the  penal 
colony  sent  from  England  to  Botany  Bay,  five  miles  south  of 
Sydney,  1787-1788. 

130:18.  Delphic  voyages.  Voyages  to  the  oracle  of  the  Pythian 
Apollo  at  Delphi  in  Greece. 

130 :  25.  Hare  Court,  etc.  In  a  letter  to  Coleridge,  June,  1809, 
Lamb  writes  :  —  "  The  rooms  are  delicious,  and  the  best  look  back- 
wards into  Hare  Court,  where  there  is  a  pump  always  going.  Just 
now  it  is  dry.  Hare  Court  trees  come  in  at  the  window,  so  that 
'tis  like  living  in  a  garden." 

130 :  34.   From  Milton's  Lycidas. 


PRAISE   OF   CHIMNEY-SWEEPEES 

London  3Iagazine,  May,  1822.  Second  title  here,  "  A  May-Day 
Effusion." 

Canon  Ainger  has  the  following  note  to  a  letter  from  Lamb  to 
Bernard  Barton,  May  15,  1824:  — 

"James  Montgomery,  the  poet,  had  this  year  edited  a  volume 
of  original  prose  and  verse,  setting  forth  the  wrongs  and  sufferings 
of  the  little  chimney-sweepers,  for  whose  relief  a  society  had  been 
for  some  time  labouring.  The  volume  was  entitled.  The  Chimney- 
Sweepers''  Friend,  and  Climbing -Boys'  Album.  Lamb  had  been 
invited  to  contribute  a  poem,  but  not  finding  time  or  inspiration, 
sent  instead  Blake's  verses,  21ie  Chimney- Sweeper,  then  all  but 
unknown  to  the  ordinary  reader  of  poetry." 

Lamb  called  Blake  "the  most  extraordinary  man  of  his  age." 

131  :  15.   The  peep-peep,  etc.     Blake's  poem  opened :  — 


NOTES  373 

"  When  my  mother  died  I  was  very  young, 
And  my  father  sold  me  while  yet  my  tongue 
Could  scarcely  cry,  '  Weep  !  weep  !  weep  !  weep  ! '  " 

131:29.  fauces  Averni.  The  jaws  of  Avernus,  Hell;  Virgil's 
uEneid,  VI.,  201. 

132:11.   kibed.     Chafed,  chilblained. 

132  :  34.   fuliginous.     Sooty. 

133  :  25.   saloop.     Sassafras  tea,  flavoured  with  milk  and  sugar. 
133  :  35.  welkin.     The  sky,  the  heavens.     Poetical. 

135:8.   noble  Rachels.     Jeremiah  xxxi.,  15. 

135  :  11.  The  young  Montagu.  Who  ran  away,  and  at  one  time 
became  a  sweep. 

135:  20.  Venus  lulled  Ascanius,  son  of  ^neas,  asleep,  and  sent 
Cupid  to  impersonate  him.     JEiieid,  I.,  643-722. 

136:7.  incunabula.  From  Latin  for  "sw^addling  clothes," 
hence,  cradle  clothes. 

136 :  18.  The  fair  of  St.  Bartholomew.  A  national  fair  held 
in  Smithfield,  from  the  twelfth  century  until  1840. 

136 :  26.  quoited.  Quoit,  to  throw  as  a  quoit ;  to  throw.  So 
used  in  Shakespeare. 

136 :  27.    The  wedding  garment.     St.  Matthew  xxii.,  11-13. 

137:38.  Golden  lads,  etc.  Shakespeare,  Cymbeline,  IV.,  ii., 
262-263. 

138 :  2.  He  carried  away,  etc.  This  praise  recalls  Dr.  Johnson's 
words  on  David  Garrick,  the  actor,  "  His  death  eclipsed  the  gayety 
of  nations."  Compare  also  what  Lamb  says  of  Munden,  Notes, 
p.  378. 

A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY  OF  BEGGARS  IN  THE 
METROPOLIS 

London  3Iagazine,  June,  1822. 

138 :  7.  besom.    A  broom  ;  originally,  twigs  bound  round  a  handle. 


374  NOTES 

138 :  8.  Alcides'  club.  Alcides,  the  Greek  name  for  Hercules  ; 
the  club  with  which  he  fought  the  Hydra. 

138 :  17.  Bellum  ad  exterminationem.     War  to  the  death. 

138  :  30.  Dionysius.  The  Younger  ;  tyrant  of  Syracuse.  Fi- 
nally expelled  in  343  b.c. 

139  :  2.  Belisarius.  A  great  general  of  the  Byzantine  Empire  in 
the  sixth  century.  There  was  a  story  that  in  his  old  age  he  was 
blind,  and  was  forced  to  beg. 

139:  5.  The  Blind  Beggar  of  Bethnal  Green.  An  old  English 
ballad  to  be  found  in  Percy's  Beliques  of  Ancient  Bomance  Poetry. 

139 :  25.   Lear.     In  Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  that  name. 

139 :  26.  Cresseid,  or  Cressida.  A  character  famous  for  her 
fickleness ;   invented  by  a  trouvere  of  the  twelfth  century. 

139 :  33.   Semiramis.     The  Assyrian  queen  who  built  Babylon. 

141 : 3.  spital  sermons.  Special  sermons  preached  for  the 
Christ's  Hospital  boys. 

141:7.  Look  .  .  .  there.  Shakespeare,  As  You  Like  It,  II.,  i., 
56-57. 

141 :  8.  Those  old  blind  Tobits.  "And  his  father  that  was  blind 
rising  up,  began  to  run  stumbling  with  his  feet ;  and  giving  a  ser- 
vant his  hand,  went  to  meet  his  son."  —  Tobias  xi.,  10. 

143 :  20.  AntcBUS.  Giant  wrestler,  the  son  of  Neptune  and 
Terra,  the  earth,  who  only  gained  strength  when  thrown  to  the 
earth. 

143 :  22.  Elgin  marble.  A  collection  of  marbles  of  the  Greek 
sculptor  Phidias,  which  once  decorated  the  Parthenon  in  Athens, 
was  brought  to  London  in  1801-1803  by  Lord  Elgin.  It  is  now  in 
the  British  Museum. 

143  :  26.    Mandrake.    A  vegetable  resembling  the  human  figure. 

143 :  29.  Centaur.  Strange  wild  people  of  classic  mythology, 
half  man,  half  horse  ;  they  engaged  in  a  deadly  battle  with  the 
Lapithfe  at  a  wedding  feast. 

143:33.  Os  sublime.     "  Upward-looking  face. " 


AZOTES  375 

144 : 8.  Lusus  Naturae  .  .  .  Accidentium.  A  freak,  not  of  Na- 
ture, but  of  Accident. 

144:88.  Bartimeus.  '-The  blind  man,  the  son  of  Timeiis,  sat 
by  the  wayside  begging."  —  St.  Mark  x.,  46. 

145:22.  "It  is  good  to  believe,"  etc.  Compare  with  these 
lines,  p.  132  : 8-13  of  Praise  of  Chimney- Sweepers. 

A  DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST  PIG 

London  Magazine^  September,  1822. 

In  a  letter  to  Bernard  Barton,  Lamb  writes:  "The  idea  of  the 
discovery  of  roasting  pigs  I  also  borrowed  from  my  friend  Man- 
ning." Thomas  Manning  was  then  travelling  in  China.  In  Lamb's 
correspondence  are  several  amusing  letters  of  thanks  for  presents 
of  pig. 

146:2.  Confucius  (Kon-fu'shius).  Latin  form  of  Chinese 
"  Kung,  the  philosopher"  (550  or  51-478  B.C.). 

149 :  16.    Mundus  edibilis.     Edible  world. 

149  :  17.    princeps  obsoniorum.     Prince  of  viands. 

150: 14.    From  Coleridge's  Epitaph  on  an  Infant. 

151 :  7.  Tame  villatic  fowl.  From  Milton's  Samson  Agonistes. 
"  Villatic,"  "  of.  or  pertaining  to,  a  villa  or  farm." 

152:27.    Barbecue.     To  broil  or  roast  whole. 

A   BACHELOR'S    COMPLAINT   OF    THE    BEHAVIOFR    OF 
MARRIED   PEOPLE 

Reprinted  from  The  Beflector  in  the  London  Mugnrdnc.  Sep- 
tember, 1822. 

155  : 4.  Phoenixes.  Fabulous  birds,  which  exi.st  only  one  at  a 
time.  After  five  hundred  years  the  bird  builds  its  own  funrr:il 
pyre.  From  its  ashes  spring  the  new  bird.  See  later.  TJtn  Old 
Margate  Hoy. 


376  2^0  TES 

155  :  37.  Love  me,  love  my  dog.     See  Popular  Fallacies,  XIII. 
p.  322. 

159:12.  Morellas.    For  Morellos  (?).     A  kind  of  cherry. 


ON  SOME   OF  THE   OLD  ACTORS 

Part  of  this  essay  (beginning  1.  11,  p.  161)  appeared  in  the  Lon- 
don Magazine,  February,  1822,  as  part  of  the  first  of  a  series  of 
three  articles,  The  Old  Actors ;  the  second  of  these,  published  in 
April,  is  the  essay  On  the  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last  Century ; 
and  the  third,  On  the  Acting  of  Munden,  is  the  last  of  the  Essays 
of  Mia. 

159  :  25.  To  follow  Lamb's  criticism,  read  Shakespeare's  Twelfth 
Night. 

161 :  18.  Hotspur's  famous  rant  about  glory.  See  Shakespeare, 
King  Henry  IV.,  Part  I.,  L,  iii.,  201  seq. :  ^... 

"  By  heaven,  methinks  it  were  an  easy  leap 
To  pluck  bright  honour  from  the  pale-faced  moon,  "  etc. 

161 :  19.  The  Venetian  incendiary.  See  Venice  Preserved,  by 
Thomas  Otway,  an  English  tragic  dramatist  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

161:  32.  lago.  In  Shakespeare's  0^/ieZ?o  ;  his  military  title  was 
"Ancient."    The  word  came  to  mean  "  aide-de  camp." 

162  : 1.    Bolts.     Arrows. 

1 62:  37.  Birth  and  feeling.  In  the  magazine  Lamb  appended 
here,  in  a  footnote,  lines  13-17  of  Twelfth  Night,  LL,  ii. 

163 :  29.  Consonancy.  Appropriateness.  See  Ainicus  Bedivi- 
vus,  p.  256  :  8. 

164:  23.  HyT)erion.  In  classic  mythology,  the  father  of  the  Sun, 
INIoon,  and  Dawn  ;  the  original  sun-god.     See  Keats's  Hyperion. 

164:38.    In  purls  naturalibus.     Naked. 


NOTES  377 

165  :  22.  Bacon.  Trancis  Bacon,  Baron  Verulam  and  Viscount 
St.  Albans  (1561-1626),  a  celebrated  English  philosopher  and 
statesman.  Author  of  The  Advancement  of  Learning^  Novum 
Organum,  and  many  other  works. 

166: 2-4.  Foppington.  In  Yanbrugh's  Belapse  ;  Tattle,  in 
Congreve's  Love  for  Love  ;  Backbite,  in  Sheridan's  School  for 
Scandal ;  Bob  Acres,  in  The  Bivals  ;  Fribble,  in  Garrick's  Miss 
in  Her  Teens. 

166:  28.  Weeds  of  Dominic.  Milton,  Paradise  Lost,  III.,  478- 
479.     Dress  of  the  order  of  monks  founded  by  St.  Domiuic. 

167 :  12.  Sir  John  Falstaff  in  Shakespeare's  Henry  /F.,  Part  II., 
I.,  ii.,  213. 

167 :  15.  Commerce  with  the  skies.  Find  a  parallel  here  to  a 
line  in  Milton's  II  Penseroso. 

167:  24.  Albe.  Vestment  of  white  linen  which  the  priest  puts 
on  before  saying  Mass. 

168: 11.  Through  brake,  etc.  See  Puck's  speech  in  Shake- 
speare's 3Iidsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  II.,  i. 

168:  25.  Children  in  the  Wood,  by  Thomas  Morton,  a  contem- 
porary of  Lamb's,  who  wrote  Speed  the  Plough,  and  created  the 
character  of  Mrs.  Grundy. 

168  :  27.    Vesta.     Goddess  of  the  hearth  and  home. 

i6g  :  1.  Sock  or  buskin.  I.e.  comedy  or  tragedy ;  the  soccus,  or 
low  boot,  was  worn  by  the  classic  actor  of  comedy  ;  the  cothurnus, 
or  buskin,  by  the  actor  of  tragedy.  See  Milton's  U Allegro  and  II 
Penseroso. 

169:14.  Dick  Amlet.  A  character  in  Tlie  Confederacy,  by 
Sir  John  Vanbrugh ;  an  English  dramatist  contemporary  with 
Congreve. 

169:  20.    Joseph  Surface.    In  the  School  for  Scandal. 

170  :  7.   Metaphrases.     Close  translations  or  renderings. 

170  :  20.,  A  Wapping  Sailor.  Wapping,  a  part  of  London  on  the 
north  bank  of  the  Thames  below  the  Tower. 


378  NOTES 

ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL   COMEDY   OF  THE  LAST 
CENTURY 

See  first  note  to  preceding  essay,  On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors. 

170  :  33.  Farquhar.  George  Farquhar,  a  dramatist  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Author  of  The  Becruiting  Officer  and  of  Tlie 
Beaux'  Stratagem. 

171 :  33.  Take  a  bond  of  fate.  Find  a  parallel  here  to  Shake- 
speare's Macbeth^  IV.,  i.,  84. 

171 :  34.  Privilege  of  Ulysses.  A  reference  to  the  visit  of  Ulys- 
ses to  the  infernal  regions.     Homer's  Odyssey^  Bk.  XL 

171 :  39.  Alsatia.  Name  given  to  a  part  of  Whitefriars,  London, 
a  resort  of  lawless  characters. 

172 :  23,  Wycherley.  William  Wycherley,  an  English  drama- 
tist of  the  Restoration.     Author  of  The  Plain  Dealer. 

172 :  30.  Catos  of  the  pit.  The  critics  on  the  floor  of  the  theatre  ; 
from  Marcus  Porcius  Cato  (234-149  b.c.)  the  Roman  statesman, 
called  the  "  Censor." 

173  : 1.    Characters  in  plays  by  Congreve  and  by  Etherege. 

174  :  12-14.    Characters  in  plays  by  Wycherley  and  by  Congreve. 

174  :  19.  Atlantis.  Reference  to  the  Xew  Atlantis,  an  allegori- 
cal romance  by  Francis  Bacon  ;  named  from  the  imaginary  island, 
first  mentioned  by  Plato,  in  which  the  scene  is  laid. 

177:  11.   Saturnalia.      Roman    holiday   in    honour    of    Saturn, 
December  17  to  23. 
177:13.    Coward  conscience.     Shakespeare,  Hamlet,  III.,  i.,  83. 

ON  THE   ACTING  OF   MUNDEN 

See  first  note  to  essay  on  Some  of  the  Old  Actoi's. 

In  a  letter  to  the  Athenmum,  February  11,  1832,  after  Munden's 
death.  Lamb  wrote  :  "In  these  serious  times  the  loss  of  half  the 
world's  fun  is  no  trivial  deprivation."  (Compare  the  comment  at 
the  close  of  Praise  of  Chimney- Sweepers,  and  note.) 


NOTES  379 

179:20.  Liston.  Henry  Crabb  Robinson  (see  Introduction, 
p.  xiv)  writes  in  his  diary  of  "Liston's  inimitable  faces." 

180:  5.  sessa.  An  interjection  of  encouragement  used  in 
Shakespeare's  plays. 

180: 13.  Cassiopeia's  Chair.  Cassiopeia,  the  Ethiopian  queen, 
mother  of  Andromeda,  who  was  placed  among  the  stars.  Find  a 
reference  to  this  constellation  in  Milton's  II  Penseroso. 

180  :  16.  Fuseli.  John  Henry  Fuseli,  a  Swiss-English  painter 
and  critic. 

180 :  22.  quiddity.  That  which  distinguishes  a  thing  from  other 
things,  and  makes  it  what  it  is. 

THE   LAST   ESSAYS   OF  ELIA 
PREFACE 

{By  a  friend  of  the  late  Elia) 

This  essay  appeared  originally  in  the  London  Magazine^  Janu- 
ary, 1823,  signed  Phil-Elia,  and  entitled,  A  Character  of  the  Late 
Elia.    It  began  as  follows  :  — 

"  This  gentleman,  who  for  some  months  past  had  been  in  a  de- 
clining way,  hath  at  length  paid  his  final  tribute  to  nature.  The 
pages  of  the  London  Magazine  will  henceforth  know  him  no 
more." 

There  followed  a  second  paragraph,  omitted  here,  and  three 
paragraphs,  after  what  is  the  close  of  the  essay  as  it  stands  ;  for 
the  last  lines,  see  Introduction,  p.  xxi.  This  essay  formed  the 
preface  to  the  1833  edition. 

183  :  11-12.  Pranked  in  an  affected  array,  etc.  See  Introduction, 
p.  xix. 

185:  38.  Toga  virilis.  The  toga  assumed  by  the  Roman  youth 
on  reaching  manhood. 

With  the  lines,  "  He  did  not  conform  to  the  inarch  of  time," 


380  NOTES 

etc.,  compare  the  sentiment  of  the  essay  on  Xew  Year''s  Eve, 
"  I  care  not  to  be  carried  with  the  tide,"  etc.,  p.  35.  And  with  this 
preface  compare  the  description  of  Elia  in  Xew  Year''s  Eve. 

In  the  same  number  of  the  London  Magazine  with  this,  appeared 
in  the  editor's  column,  "The  Lion's  Head,"  the  following  passage 
from  a  letter  ••  To  our  Readers  "  :  "  Elia  is  dead  !  .  .  .  Mercy  on 
us  !  —  we  hope  we  are  wrong,  —  but  we  have  our  shadowy  sus- 
picions, that  Elia,  poor  gentleman  !  has  not  been  honestly  dealt 
by  ! ..  .  .  We  could  lay  our  finger  upon  the  very  man  we  suspect, 
as  being  guilty  of  Ella's  death  !  "  This  was  followed  by  a  letter  in 
the  March  number  of  the  magazine,  declaring  '•  Elia  is  not  dead," 
—  written,  of  course,  by  Lamb. 


BLAKESMOOR  IN   H SHIRE 

London  Magazine^  September,  1824. 

This  "old  great  house"  Lamb  refers  to  in  his  letters, — to 
Southey  in  1799,  to  Bernard  Barton  in  1827  ;  in  this  last  letter 
he  writes:  "You  have  well  described  your  old-fashioned  grand 
paternal  hall.  Is  it  not  odd  that  every  one's  earliest  recollections 
are  of  some  such  place  !  I  had  my  Blakesware  (Blakesmoor  in 
the  London).  Nothing  fills  a  child's  mind  like  a  large  old 
mansion." 

In  describing  a  visit  to  AYidford  in  Hertfordshire,  in  an  article 
quoted  in  the  Introduction,  Canon  Ainger  writes:  "It  was  well 
that  we  had  such  a  guide,  for  since  Lamb's  day  the  railway  (the 
Buntingford  branch  of  the  Great  Eastern)  has  passed  through 
the  parish,  and  old  roads  have  been  deserted,  and  old  landmarks 
removed,  so  that  the  site  of  the  old  house,  now  marked  by  a  young 
plantation,  would  have  escaped  our  search." 

Blakesv/are  was  the  manor-house  of  the  Plumers  (see  Intro- 
duction, p.  xii).      Mary  Lamb   describes   the  same  old  mansion 


NOT£:s  381 

in  3Irs.  Leicester's  School,  the  scene  of  which  is  laid  in  Hertford- 
shire. 

1 86 :  14.    Puts  us  by.     Turns  us  away,  or  diverts  us  from. 

187 :  25.  Acteeon.  A  hunter  in  classic  mythology  who  was 
changed  to  a  stag  by  Diana,  goddess  of  the  chase,  because  he 
came  upon  her  when  bathing.  In  mid  sprout.  A  reference  to 
the  sprouting  of  the  stag's  horns. 

187  :  27.  Dan.  Dan  or  Daun,  Lord.  An  old  English  prefix  to 
names  of  persons  of  all  sorts.     "  Dan  Chaucer." 

187 :  29.  Mrs.  Battle.  See  essay,  Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on 
Whist. 

188 :  20.  garden-loving  poet.  Here  in  the  magazine  was  a  foot- 
note, "  Marvell  on  Appleton  House,  to  the  Lord  Fairfax."  For 
Marvell,  see  Notes,  p.  368, 

189 :  17.    Resurgam.     I  shall  rise  again. 

189  :  31.   JEgon.     A  shepherd  in  Greek  pastoral  poetry. 

189  :  39.   W s.     So  Lamb  disguises  the  name  Plumer. 

190: 11.    Alice.     See  Litroduction,  p.  xii. 

190:  33.  Sylvanus.  A  Koman  wood-deity,  corresponding  to  the 
Greek  Pan.     He  brought  fruitfulness  to  gardens  and  orchards. 

POOR  RELATIONS 

Londo7i  Magazine^  May,  1823. 

191:10-12.  Agathocles'  pot.  A  gathocles,  a  tyrant  of  Syracuse, 
was  originally  a  potter.  Mordecai.  "And  whereas  I  have  all 
these  things,  I  think  I  have  nothing,  so  long  as  I  see  Mardochai  the 
Jew  sitting  before  the  king's  gate."  —  Esther  v.,  13.  Lazarus.  St. 
Luke  xvi.,  19-21.  A  lion.  Proverbs  xxvi.,  13.  A  frog.  Ex- 
odus viii.,  3.  A  fly.  Ecclesiastes  x.,  1.  A  mote.  St.  Matthew 
vii.,  3. 

193:6-6.  Aliquando  sufflaminandus  erat.  It  was  necessary 
sometimes  to  check  or  repress  him. 


382  NOTES 

194:6.  Nessian  venom.  The  poisonous  blood  of  Nessus,  the 
centaur,  in  which  the  garment  of  Hercules  was  steeped. 

194:  7.  Latimer.  Hugh  Latimer,  prelate  of  the  English  Church, 
who  identified  himself  closely  with  the  Reformation.  He  gradu- 
ated at  Cambridge,  1510. 

195: 15.  St.  Sebastian  in  Spain.  Besieged  and  taken  by  Well- 
ington, 1813. 

196:  14.  Young  Grotiuses.  Hugo  Grotius,  a  Dutch  jurist  of  the 
early  seventeenth  century,  founded  the  science  of  international  law. 


DETACHED  THOUGHTS  ON  BOOKS  AND  READING 

London  Magazine,  July,  1822. 

197 :  18.    The  Relapse,  by  Sir  John  Yanbrugh,  see  Notes,' p.  377. 

197:28.  Shaftesbury.  Antony  Ashley  Cooper,  third  earl  of 
Shaftesbury  (1671-1713),  a  moralist  and  writer. 

197 :  29.  Jonathan  Wild.  A  novel  by  Henry  Fielding,  play- 
wright and  novelist  of  the  eighteenth  century  ;  author  also  of  Tom 
Jones  (see  below)  and  Peregrine  Pickle. 

198:1-2.  Edward  Gibbon,  the  famous  English  historian,  and 
William  Robertson,  the  Scottish  historian,  both  of  the  eighteenth 
century. 

198 :  4.  Flavins  Josephus.  A  celebrated  Jewish  historian  of  the 
first  century. 

198 :  15.  Adam  Smith.  A  Scottish  political  economist  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Author  of  the  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  ana 
Causes  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 

198 :  19.  Paracelsus.  A  celebrated  German-Swiss  alchemist  of 
the  sixteenth  century. 

198:38.  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  The  famous  novel  by  Oliver 
Goldsmith  (1728-1774),  author,  poet,  novelist,  and  dramatist. 

199:22.   Bishop   Taylor.     Jeremy   Taylor,    an   English   bishop 


NOTES  383 

and  writer  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Author  of  Holy  Living 
and  Holy  Dying. 

199:  28.  I  do  not  care,  etc.  Here  followed  in  the  London  Maga- 
zine :  "You  cannot  make  a  pet  book  of  an  author  whom  every- 
body reads." 

199:86-37.  Beaumont,  Francis  (1584-1616).  Fletcher,  John 
(1579-1625).  Dramatists  and  poets  ;  intimate  friends  and  literary 
partners. 

200:  25-26.  Kit  Marlowe.  Christopher  Marlowe  (1564-1593),' 
English  poet  and  first  great  English  dramatist.  The  author  of  plays 
which  influenced  Shakespeare  :  llie  Jew  of  Malta^  Edicard  IL, 
etc.  Drayton,  Michael  (1563-1631),  English  poet,  author  of  The 
Ballad  of  Agincourt.  Drummond  of  Hawthornden.  William 
Drummond  (1585-1649),  author  of  the  famous  Conversations  with 
Ben  Jonson. 

201 :  9.  Pro  bono  publico.     For  the  public  benefit. 

201 :  37.  Candide.  By  the  French  writer  Voltaire  (Francois 
Marie  Arouet),  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

202 : 1-2.  Cythera.  An  island  sacred  to  Venus  in  classic  my- 
thology. Pamela.  The  first  great  English  novel,  by  Samuel 
Eichardson  (1689-1761)  ;  author  also  of  Clarissa  Harlowe  and  Sir 
Charles  Grandison. 

202 :  30.  Snatch  a  fearful  joy.  From  Thomas  Gray's  Ode  on  a 
Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College. 

202 :  36.   Quaint  poetess.     Mary  Lamb. 


STAGE  ILLUSION 

London  Magazine^  August,  1825. 

Original  title  :  Imperfect  Dramatic  Illusion. 

204 :  6.  Jack  Bannister.     See  essay  On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors. 

205  :  38.   Osric.   In  Shakespeare's  Hamlet. 


384  NOTES 


TO   THE    SHADE   OF   ELLISTON 

The  Englishman'' s  Magazine.,  August,  1831. 

This  and  the  essay  that  follows  were  published  in  the  magazine 
as  Beminiscences  of  Elliston. 

207 :  18.  School-men.  Teachers  in  the  mediaeval  universities. 
Unchrisom  babes.  Unbaptized  babes.  A  "  chrisom  child"  was 
one  who  died  within  a  month  of  baptism. 

207  :  35.    Figurantes.     Dancers  in  the  figures  of  the  ballet. 

208  :  4.  Stygian.  From  Styx,  one  of  the  rivers  of  Hades.  See 
Notes,  p.  355. 

208:  5.  The  old  boatman.  Charon  (see  below),  who  ferried  the 
dead  over  the  rivers  of  the  underworld,  Acheron,  Cocytus,  and  Styx. 

208:  6.  Raucid.     Hoarse  (see  Raucous). 

208 :  23.     Monodrame.     A  dramatic  piece  for  a  single  performer. 

208 :  24.  Thracian  Harper.  Orpheus.  See  Notes,  p.  337.  He 
charmed  all  the  beings  of  the  underworld  with  his  music,  so  that 
he  was  permitted  to  take  away  his  wife  Eurydice,  on  condition  that 
she  did  not  look  back  as  she  was  leaving.  This  she  did,  however, 
and  was  forced  to  return. 

208:  27.    Pura  et  puta  anima.     A  pure  and  clean  soul. 

209:  9.   Plaudito,  et  Valeto.     I  applaud  and  say  farewell. 

A  few  lines  followed  the  Latin  in  the  London  Magazine.,  and  the 
article  was  signed  "  Mr.  H."  in  reference  to  Elliston's  having  taken 
the  part  in  Lamb's  farce  of  that  name  when  it  was  put  upon  the 
stage  and  failed. 

ELLISTONIANA 

The  Englishman's  Magazine,  August,  1831.  See  first  note  to 
preceding  essa5^ 

Of  Elliston,  Henry  Crabb  Robinson  writes  in  his  diary,  "He  is 
a  fine  bustling  comedian  ;  but  he  bustles  also  in  tragedy." 


NOTES  385 

111  the  London  Magazine,  September,  1822,  under  "  The  Drama," 
is  an  attack  on  Elliston,  manager  of  Theatre  Royal,  Drmy  Lane  : 
"  This  sorry  manager  '  dressed  '  (to  use  the  words  of  the  immortal 
bard  whom  he  so  modestly  and  liberally  patronizes),  'dressed  in 
a  little  brief  authority,  plays  such  fantastic  tricks  before  high 
Heaven'  — not  'as  make  the  angels  weep' — but  his  own  candle- 
snuffers  laugh,  and  his  scene  shifters  blush." 

209  :  27.    Lovelace.     In  Clarissa  Harloiue.     See  Notes,  p.  383. 

210  :  19.   ipso  facto.    By  the  very  deed  itself. 

210  :  27.  Apelles.  A  famous  Greek  painter  of  the  time  of  Alex- 
ander the  Great.     See  Notes,  p.  350. 

211  :  3.  Ranger.  A  part  created  by  Garrick,  in  The  Suspicious 
Husband,  by  Benjamin  Hoadly,  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century. 

211  :23.   Gibber,  Colley.    An  English  actor  and  dramatist. 

212  :  13.  Consular  Exile.  The  celebrated  Roman  general,  Caius 
Marius,  seven  times  consul ;  the  rival  of  Sulla.  He  was  exiled  in 
88  B.C. 

212  :  14.  A  more  illustrious  exile.  Napoleon  Buonaparte,  em- 
peror of  the  French,  1804-1814.  Compelled  to  abdicate,  he  was 
given  the  island  of  Elba  as  a  "  sovereign  principality." 

212  :  29.   Romeo,  Mercutio.    In  Shakespeare's  Romeo  and  Juliet. 

212  :  31.    Sir  A C .     Sir  Anthony  Carlisle.     See  Notes, 

p.  364. 

213  :  10.   Madame  Vestris.     A  star  of  Drury  Lane. 

213  :  23.  Son  of  Peleus.  Achilles.  See  Homer's  Iliad,  Bk.  XXL, 
"  Yet  over  me  too  hang  death  and  forceful  fate."  Translation  by 
Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers. 

THE   OLD   MARGATE   HOY 

The  London  Magazine,  July,  1823. 

A  "hoy"  was  "a  small  vessel  usually  rigged  as  a  sloop,  and 
2c 


386  NOTES 

employed  in  carrying  passengers  and  goods,  particularly  in  short 
distances  on  the  sea-coast." 

214  :  20.    Before.     I.e.  in  the  essay  on  Oxford  in  the  Vacation. 

215  :  12.  That  fire-god,  etc.  Hephaistos,  the  Roman  Vulcan,  the 
Greek  god  of  fire.  '-  And  the  strong  River  burned,  and  spake  and 
called  to  him  by  name :  '  Hephaistos.  there  is  no  god  can  match 
with  thee,  nor  will  I  fight  thee  thus  ablaze  with  fire.'  "  Iliad,  Bk. 
XXI.     Translation  by  Lang,  Leaf,  and  ]Myers. 

215  :  27.   Ariel.     In  Shakespeare's  Tempest.,  I.,  ii.,  196-199. 

216  :  22.    Genius  Loci.    Nature  of  the  place. 

217  :  12.  Ignorant  present.     Shakespeare's  Macbeth.,  I-?  v.,  58-60. 

217  :  28.  The  Reculvers.  Towers,  all  that  remained  of  the  old 
parish  church  of  the  village  Reculver,  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Thames. 

218  :  15.  Pent  up  in  populous  cities.  See  Milton,  Paradise  Lost, 
IX.,  415. 

'•'  As  one,  who  long  in  populous  citj'  pent." 

219  :  11.  Orellana.  A  name  (from  the  discoverer,  Francisco  de 
Orellana)  now  only  occasionally  given  to  the  Amazon  River. 

219:15.   Still-vexed  Bermoothes.     Tempest,  I.,  ii.,  229. 

219  :  36.    '•  Gebir."'     A  poem  by  Landor.     See  Notes,  p.  357. 

220  :  16.    Amphitrite.     In  classic  mythology,  the  wife  of  Neptune. 

221  :  8.  To  read  strange  matter  in.  Adapted  from  Macbeth,  I., 
v.,  61-65. 

THE    CONVALESCENT 

London  Magazine,  July,  1825. 

Lamb's  friend,  William  Hazlitt.  has  left  his  reflections  on  Con- 
valescence, quoted  in  the  memoirs  of  him  by  William  Carew 
Hazlitt. 

222  :  26.    Mare  Clausum.     Closed  sea. 

225  :  18.  Lernean.  From  Lerna,  in  ancient  geography,  the 
marshy  region  south  of  Argos,  Greece,  where  dwelt  the  Hydra  slain 
by  Hercules.     He  dipped  his  arrows  into  the  Hydra's  blood  so  that 


NOTES  387 

they  might  prove  fatal.     Philoctetes,  to  whom  the  arrows  were 
bequeathed,  wounded  his  own  foot  with  one,  and  suffered   most 
agonizing  pangs  until  he  was  cured  by  Machaon,  son  of  .Esculapius 
(god  of  medicine),  and  surgeon  to  the  Greeks  in  the  Trojan  War. 
226  :  2.   In  Articulo  Mortis.     At  the  very  point  of  death. 

226  :  13.   Tityus.     One  of  the  giants  in  classic  mythology. 
226:16.   Essayist.     In  the  magazine,    "Monthly   Contributor, 

Elia." 

THE    SANITY   OF   TRUE    GENIUS 

The  NeM  Monthly  Magazine^  May,  1826. 

This  appeared  originally  as  one  of  the  Popular  Fallacies,  see 
Notes,  p.  398,  when  it  had  as  its  sub-title  :  That  Ch'eat  Wit  is 
Allied  to  Madness.  The  opening  sentence  then  read,  "So  far 
from  this  being  true,  the  greatest  wits  will  ever  be  found  to  be 
the  sanest  writers." 

227  : 5-8.  Find  a  parallel  here  to  Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  II. , 
1047  ;  I.,  295  seq. 

227  :  8.    Chaos  and  old  Night.     Paradise  Lost,  I.,  543. 
227  :  10.     Shakespeare's  King  Lear,  IV.,  vii.,  16-18. 
227  :  23.    Proteus.    A  son  of  Neptune,  a  learned  sage,  who  pas- 
tured a  herd  of  sea-calves. 

227  :  26.  Caliban.  A  monster,  the  son  of  a  witch  in  Shakespeare's 
Tempest. 

228:6.  Withers.  George  Wither  (or  Wyther,  or,  as  here, 
Withers) ,  a  noted  English  poet  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Among 
Lamb's  critical  essays  is  one  On  the  Poetical  Works  of  George 
Wither. 

228  :  37.  Hesperian  fruit.  The  apples  received  from  Earth  by 
Juno  at  her  wedding,  and  kept  by  the  daughter  of  Hesperis  in  a 
garden  watched  by  a  dragon.  Tantalus.  In  classic  mytlioloiry. 
punished  for  serving  the  flesh  of  his  son  Pelops  to  the  gods,  in  nrro- 


388  NOTES 

gance.     He  stood  forever  in  a  pool  up  to  his  chin  in  water,  which 
receded  when  he  stooped  to  drink. 

229  : 1.  Cyclops.  The  three  giants  of  classic  mythology,  sons 
of  Urania  (the  muse  of  astronomy)  and  Goea  (the  personification 
of  Earth),  w^ho  forged  thunderbolts  for  Jupiter  in  the  workshop  of 
Vulcan.     See  Notes,  p.  386. 

CAPTAIN  JACKSON 
London  Magazine,  November,  1824. 

230  :  5.  Althea's  horn.  One  of  the  horns  of  the  goat  Amalthea, 
with  whose  milk  the  infant  Jupiter  was  fed.  This  became  the  cornu- 
copia, or  Horn  of  Plenty. 

230  :  31.    Vere  hospitibus  sacra.     In  truth,  sacred  to  guests. 
233  :  20.    Beau  Tibbs  hi  The  Citizen  of  the  Worlds  by  Oliver 
Goldsmith.    See  Notes,  p.  382. 

THE   SUPERANNUATED   MAN 

London  Magazine^  May,  1825.     Signed  J.  D. 

This  appeared  in  the  magazine  in  two  parts.  The  lines  adapted 
from  Virgil  {Eclogues,  L,  28  :  "  Freedom  though  late  took  thought 
of  me  '■)  were  prefixed  to  Part  I. ;  those  from  0'  Keefe,  to  Part  II., 
which  commenced  at  1.  3,  p.  239,  ''A  fortnight  has  passed," 
etc.  Lamb's  letters  to  Wordsworth,  and  to  Bernard  Barton  on 
April  6  of  this  year,  give  practically  this  account  of  his  "  Hegira, 
or  Plight  from  Leadenhall,"  as  he  calls  it ;  throughout  his  earlier 
letters  are  many  references  to  the  irksomeness  of  his  work  (see 
Introduction,  p.  xi).  He  had  appreciated  always,  however,  the 
certainty  of  his  position,  as  against  the  uncertainty  of  literary 
work,  and,  in  January  9,  1823,  wrote  to  dissuade  Bernard  Barton 
from  giving  up  his  situation  in  a  bank,  and  depending  upon  his 
writings. 


NOTES  389 

236  :  24.  Esto  perpetua.     Maj^  this  be  a  lasting  memorial. 

238:81.  Gresham.  Sir  Thomas  Gresham,  knighted  by  Queen 
Elizabeth.  An  English  financier.  He  founded  the  Royal  Ex- 
change. 

238 :  32.  Whittington.  Sir  Kichard  Whittington,  three  times 
lord  mayor  of  London,  in  the  early  fifteenth  century. 

240:  2.   Cantle.     An  old  word  meaning  '-fragment," 

240 :  7.  Lucretian  Pleasure.  A  reference  to  the  opening  lines  of 
De  Beriim  Xatura,  Bk.  II.,  by  the  Roman  poet  Lucretius,  who 
suggests  the  pleasure  of  beholding  from  the  land  the  distress  of 
another  on  the  troubled  waves  of  the  sea. 

240  :  20.   Find  a  parallel  here  to  Milton's  II  Fenseroso. 

240  :  24.   Cum  dignitate.     With  dignity. 

240  :  27.  Opus  operatum  est.     The  work  is  completed. 


THE   GENTEEL   STYLE   IN  WRITING 

The  Neio  Monthly  Magazine,  March,  1826. 

This  essay  appeared  originally  as  one  of  the  Popular  Falla- 
cies (see  Notes,  p.  398),  with  for  its  sub-title,  That  my  Lord 
Shaftesbury  and  Sir  William  Temjyle  are  models  of  the  genteel 
style  in  writing.  The  essay  then  began,  "  We  should  prefer," 
etc. 

240  :  30.  Shaftesbury.  See  Detached  Thoughts  on  Books  ami 
Beading. 

240 :  31.  Sir  William  Temple.  An  English  statesman  and  author 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  At  one  "time  ambassador  to  the 
Hague. 

241:34.  Morrice-dancers.  Or  Morris-dancers,  "  wearing  hoods 
and  dresses  tagged  with  bells,"  and  "representing  the  personages 
in  the  Robin  Hood  legend." 

241 :  35.   Maid  Marian.     Robin  Hood's    sweetheart  in   the    old 


390  NOTES 

ballads ;  the  daughter  of  an  earl,  she  dressed  as  a  page  and  fol- 
lowed him  to  the  greenwood. 

BAKBARA   S 

London  Magazine,  April,  1825. 

In  a  letter  to  Wordsworth  Lamb  refers  to  this  as  "a  story 
gleaned  from  Miss  Kelly  "  ;  in  his  notes  to  the  essay,  Barry  Corn- 
wall (see  Introduction)  says  that  Miss  Kelly  herself  was  the  hero- 
ine. In  the  London  Magazine,  August,  1821,  under  "  The  Drama," 
is  a  reference  to  this  actress  as  "  the  soul  of  the  English  Operu 
House."  Lamb  admired  her  greatly  ;  he  writes  in  a  letter  to  Mrs. 
Wordsworth  of  *' Fanny  Kelly's  divine  plain  face.'*  In  1819  he 
made  her  a  proposal  of  marriage.  In  writing  to  decline  this  Miss 
Kelly  adds:  "  I  am  not  insensible  to  the  high  honour  which  the 
preference  of  such  a  mind  as  yours  confers  upon  me."  The 
letters  on  this  subject  were  published  for  the  first  time  in  Sep- 
tember, 1903,  in  Harpefs  MontliJy.  See  Vol.  107,  p.  516,  Charles 
Lamh's  One  JRomance,  by  John  Hollingshead. 

245  :  33.   Arthur,     In  Shakespeare's  King  John. 

246 :  1.    Duke  of  York.     In  Shakespeare's  Bichard  III. 

247  :  16.  Macready.  William  Charles  jNIacready.  A  noted  Eng- 
lish actor,  famous  in  Shakespeare's  tragedies. 

THE   TO:\[BS  IX  THE   ABBEY 

London  Magazine,  October,  1823. 

This  originally  formed  part  of  a  longer  letter  to  the  poet  Robert 
Southey.     See  Introduction,  p.  xvii. 

252:12.  Nelson,  Horatio,  first  Viscount  Nelson  (1758-1805), 
the  celebrated  English  admiral  who  defeated  the  French-Spanish 
fleet  (of  Napoleon)  at  Cape  Trafalgar.  Southey  had  written  a  Life 
of  Nelson.  - 


NOTES  391 

AMICUS   REDIVIVUS 

London  Magazine,  December,  1823. 

253  :  <3.  G-  D-  Lamb's  friend  George  Dyer.  See  essay  on 
Oxford  in  the    Vacation. 

253 : 8.  Cottage  at  Islington.  This  cottage,  in  which  Lamb 
lived  from  1823  to  1827,  he  describes  in  a  letter  to  Bernard  Barton, 
September  2,  1823,  "  I  have  a  cottage  in  Colebrook  Row,  Isling- 
ton ;  a  cottage,  for  it  is  detached ;  .  .  .  the  New  River  (rather 
elderly  by  this  time)  runs  (if  a  moderate  walking  pace  may  be  so 
termed)  close  to  the  foot  of  the  house." 

In  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Hazlitt,  in  November  of  this  year,  he  describes 
the  incident  which  is  made  the  subject  of  this  essay. 

253  :  22.  His  who  bore  Anchises.  ^neas  carried  his  father 
Anchises  from  Troy,  when  the  city  was  sacked  and  burned  by  the 
Greeks. 

254  :  14.   Cannabis.     Hemp.     A  reference  to  hanging. 

254 :  19.  Middleton's  Head.  An  inn  named  for  Sir  Hugh  Mid- 
dleton  (see  later)  ;  projector  of  the  "New  River"  water  supply  of 
London. 

255  :  27.    tremor  cordis.     Quivering  of  the  heart. 

255  :  31.    Sir  Hugh.    In  Shakespeare's  3Ierry  Wives  of  Windsor. 
255 :  39.   Abyssinian   traveller.     James  Bruce,  explorer  of   the 

sources  of  the  Nile. 

256  :  3.    Swans.     See  note  on  Cayster,  p.  362. 

256:20.  Euripus  .  .  .  Aristotle.  The  famous  Greek  philoso- 
pher Aristotle  died  in  Eubcea  in  322  b.c.  ;  there  was  a  story  that 
he  drowned  himself  in  Euripus,  the  strait  that  separates  Euboea 
from  the  mainland. 

256:23.    Clarence.     In  Shakespeare's  liichard  III.,  L,  iv. 

256  :  27.   Palinurus.    Pilot  of  ilOneas's  ship  ;  Virgil's  .Eneid. 

256  :  36.    Dr.  Hawes,  founder  of  the  Royal  Humane  Society. 

257  :  13.    Asphodel.     The  liower  of  Elysium. 


392  NOTES 

257  :  !"•  Jeremiah  Markland  and  Thomas  Tyrwhitt,  scholars 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

257  :  footnote.  Line  adapted  from  Ovid,  "Virgilium  vidi  tan- 
turn." 

257  :  21.   Anthony  Askew.     A  classical  scholar  and  a  physician. 

257:  22.  Lamb  here  adopts  the  tone  of  the  classical  elegies,  es- 
pecially the  Mors  Tibulli,  on  the  death  of  the  Roman  poet  Tibul- 
lus,  by  Ovid  (see  Notes,  p.  362),  in  which  poets  already  dead  rise 
up  to  greet  the  newcomer.  iSee  a  parallel  in  Shelley's  Adonais, 
—  a  lament  for  the  poet  Keats, — stanzas  xlv.,  xlvi. 

SOME    SONNETS   OF   SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY 

London  Magazine,  September,  1823. 

Here  this  essay  was  No.  1  in  a  series,  NugcB  Criticce :  hy  the 
author  of  Eli  a,  signed  L. 

258:  10.  A  later  Sydney.  Algernon  Philip  Sydney,  an  English 
patriot.  Beheaded  in  1683,  as  a  supporter  of  the  Duke  of  Mon- 
mouth. 

258 :  24.    Circum  pragcordia  frigus.     Chill  about  the  heart. 

258:80.  Author  of  The  Schoolmisti^ess.  William  Shenstone,  an 
English  poet  of  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

262 :  19.  Tempe.  A  valley  in  Thessaly,  celebrated  from  earliest 
times  for  its  beauty. 

262  :  35.  Imp.  As  used  in  falconry,  to  mend  a  broken  wing,  by 
the  insertion  of  a  feather.    See  Shakespeare,  BichardlL,  II.,  i.,  291. 

263 :  4.    Lewis.   Louis  XL  of  France. 

263  :  16.    Mol.     ^olus,  in  classic  mythology,  god  of  the  winds. 
264:26.   W.  H.     William  Hazlitt,  Lamb's  friend.     The  author 

of  Table  Talk,  Spirit  of  the  Age,  Characters  of  Shakspere'' s  Plays, 
and  many  other  essays. 

265  :  6.  Made  on  him.  In  the  magazine,  "  the  epitaph  of  Lord 
Brooke."  (See  Notes,  p.  352.) 


NOTES  393 

265  :  10,  seq.  "Written  upon  tlie  Death  of  the  Right  Honourable 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Knight,  Lord  Governour  of  Flushing."  By- 
Matthew  Roydon.  Lamb  quoted  from  line  29  of  this  elegy  in 
New  Year's  Eve,  p.  36,  1.  10. 


NEWSPAPERS   THIRTY-FIVE   YEARS  AGO 

The  Englishman'' s  Magazine,  October,  1831. 

This  essay  was  No.  11  of  a  series  called  "  Peter's  Net,"  the 
motto  of  which  was,  "All  is  Fish  that  comes  to  my  Net."  Here 
the  title  read:  On  the  Total  Defect  of  the  Quality  (f  Imagination^ 
observable  in  the  Works  of  Modern  British  Artists. 

267  :  8.    scaturient.     Gushing,  or  springing  out. 

267  :  26.  The  Gnat.  The  Cnlex,  a  poem  for  some  years  ascribed 
to  Virgil. 

267 :  27.  Duck.  Reference  to  the  lines  written  by  Dr.  Johnson 
at  three  years  of  age  :  — 

"  Here  lies  good  master  duck 

Whom  Samuel  Johnson  trod  on ; 

If  it  had  lived  it  had  been  good  luck, 

For  then  we'd  had  an  odd  one." 

The  duck  was  "the  eleventh  of  a  brood." 

268  :  4.    Cytherea.     A  name  for  Venus.     See  Notes,  p.  383. 

268 :  18.  Astraea.  Goddess  of  Justice,  who  dwelt  on  earth 
in  the  goldten  age;  "the  last  of  the  celestials  has  left  the 
earth." 

269 :  18.    Bacchus.     In  classic  mythology,  the  god  of  wine. 

269  :  33.  Revocare  gradus,  etc.  "  To  regain  one's  feet  and  go  up 
out  into  the  air." 

270:13.    Tale.    Number  or  amount. 

270:  21.    Bob  Allen.     See  essay  on  Christ's  Hospital. 


394  NOTES 

BAREENNESS  OF  THE  IMAGINATIVE  FACULTY  IX  THE 
PRODUCTION  OF  :\IODERN  ART 

TJie  Athenmim,  January  12,  19,  26,  1833.  and  February  2,  1833. 

The  essay  appeared  originally  in  two  parts,  the  second  beginning 
at  1.  9,  p.  279,  "  By  a  wise  falsification,"  etc.,  the  third  at  1.  37, 
p.  281,  "  Artists  again  err,  etc."  The  original  title  was.  On  the 
total  Defect  of  the  Quality  of  Imagination,  Observable  in  the 
]Vorks  of  Modern  British  Ai'tists. 

273  :  31.   Titian  (1-477-1576).     A  famous  Venetian  painter. 

273  :  32.  Ariadne.  In  Greek  mythology,  the  daughter  of  Minos, 
king  of  Crete,  abandoned  by  the  Greek  hero  Theseus,  upon  the 
Island  of  Naxos,  where  she  became  the  wife  of  Bacchus.  See 
Notes,  p.  393. 

274:6.  Guido  Reni  (Ra'ne).  A  noted  Italian  painter;  a  pupil 
of  the  Carracci.     See  Notes,  p.  366. 

275 :  24.  Poussin,  Nicolas.  A  French  historical  and  landscape 
painter  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

275:28.    Ternary.     Made  up  of  three. 

276:2.  Watteauish.  Jean  Antoine  Watteau  (1684-1721),  a 
French  painter  "  who  was  particularly  successful  with  subjects 
representing  conventional  shepherds  and  shepherdesses,  fetes 
champetres,  rustic  dances,"  etc. 

276:  18.  "  Belshazzar's  Feast,"  by  Martin.  Criticised  by  Lamb 
also  in  a  letter  to  Bernard  Barton,  June  11,  1827. 

277 :  29.    Eliphaz.     Job  iv.,  13-15. 

278  :  34.  Veronese,  Paul.  A  celebrated  Italian  painter  who  lived 
and  painted  in  Venice.     A  contemporary  of  Titian. 

280 :  32.  Julio  Romano.  An  Italian  painter  and  architect ;  a 
pupil  of  Raphael.    See  Notes,  p.  366. 

281 :  1.  Dryad.  The  dryads  in  classic  mythology  were  wood- 
nymphs,  who  came  into  existence  with  their  trees  and  perished 
with  them. 


NOTES  395 

281 ;  3.  Ovidian  transformations.  A  reference  to  the  subject  of 
Ovid's  (see  Notes,  p.  302)  Melamorphoses,  the  stories  of  those  whc? 
had  been  transformed  by  the  gods. 

281 :  32.  Demiurgus.  The  Creator.  Name  for  a  skilled  work- 
man. 

282 :  9.   Errant.     Wandering,  in  search  of  adventure. 

283  :  13,  14.  Goneril,  Regan.  The  unnatural  daughters  in  Shake- 
speare's King  Lear. 

In  a  letter  to  Southey,  August  19,  1825,  Lamb  makes  a  comment 
in  this  same  spirit  upon  "that  unfortunate  Second  Part"  of  Bon 
Quixote. 


REJOICINGS  UPON  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE 

London  Magazine,  January,  1823.  Signed  "  Elia's  Ghost," 
See  Preface,  which  appeared  in  this  same  number. 

284 :  28.   Vigils.     The  days  preceding  Church  feasts. 

285  :  10.    Lady  Day.     The  Feast  of  the  Annunciation,  March  25. 

285 :  11-13.     Twelfth  Day  .  .  .  Epiphanous.     See  Notes,  p.  34Q. 

285  :  22.  Erra  Pater.  An  astrologer  often  mentioned  in  Eliza- 
bethan literature. 

285 :  30.  Barons.  A  baron  of  beef  was  two  sirloins,  not  cut 
asunder. 

285  :  35.   Ling.     A  kind  of  fish. 

286:7.  Spunging.  An  obsolete  spelling  of  sponging;  i.e.  plun- 
dering. 

286  :  16.    Meagrims.     Headache  ;  a  nervous  attack. 

286:20.  Restorative,  etc.  Punning  reference  to  the  Restora- 
tion ;  the  oak  apple  was  worn  as  a  badge  by  the  Tories. 

287:  19.    Fifth  of  November.     See  note  on  Guy  Fawkes,  p.  335. 
287 :  24.    Boutefeu.     An  incendiary. 


396  NOTES 

287:80.  Mumchance.  A  game  with  cards  or  dice  played  in 
silence ;  therefore,  silent. 

288:0.  Nonce.  Literally,  "For  the  once";  i.e.  for  that  time 
only  ;  for  the  present. 

288 :  28.  The  Ember  Days.  Three  days  of  fasting,  which  are 
observed  four  times  yearly  ;  called  in  the  Breviary  "  qiiattuor  tem- 
pora,"  —  in  English  "Ember  Days,"  from  an  old  word  for  the 
"regular  return  of  a  given  season."  They  have  really  no  con- 
nection with  "embers"  as  here  implied. 

288 :  30.   Septuagesima.     The  third  Sunday  before  Lent. 

288:33.  Rogation  Day.  The  Rogation  Days — so  called  be- 
cause then  the  Litany  (Latin  Bogatio)  is  chanted  —  are  the  Mon- 
day, Tuesday,  and  "Wednesday  before  Ascension  Day. 

THE    WEDDING 

London  Magazine^  June,  1825.  ^ 

Canon  Ainger,  in  his  note  to  this  essay,  points  out  that  "when 
Lamb  revised  the  essay  for  the  Last  Essays  of  Elia,  he  was  him- 
self looking  forward  to  a  bereavement  strictly  parallel  to  that  of 
the  old  admiral ;"  that  is,  to  the  marriage  of  his  adopted  daugh- 
ter, Emma  Isola,  to  ]Mr.  Moxon.  the  publisher. 

292 : 1.  Diana's  nymphs.  Followers  of  the  goddess  of  the 
chase  ;  green  was  the  forester's  colour. 

292 :  9.  Iphigenia.  Daughter  of  Agamemnon,  who  was  to  be 
sacrificed  to  Diana  in  order  to  bring  favourable  winds,  that  the 
ships  of  the  Greeks  might  sail  from  AuUs  to  Troy. 

THE   CHILD   ANGEL:    A   DREAM 

London  Magazine.,  June,  1823. 

295  :  3.  Loves  of  the  Angels.  By  Thomas  Moore,  the  friend  and 
biographer  of  Byron.     In  his  preface  Moore  writes:  "I  think  it 


NOTES  397 

right  to  remark  that  in  point  of  fact  the  subject  is  not  scriptural  — 
the  notion  upon  which  it  is  founded  having  originated  in  an  erro- 
neous translation." 

295  :  15.    Gossiping.     A  christening-feast. 

296 :  16.  Ge-Urania.  Urania,  the  Muse  of  Astronomy  in  classic 
mythology  ;  Goea,  or  Ge,  the  personification  of  the  Earth. 

297:  8.   Tutelar  Genius.     See  Notes,  p.  336. 

A  DEATH-BED 

The  original  of  this  essay  is  a  letter  written  in  January,  1827,  to 
Lamb's  friend,  Henry  Crabb  Robinson. 

297 :  30.  N.  R.  stands  for  Mr.  Randall  Norris,  sub-treasurer  of 
the  Inner  Temple.     See  Introduction,  p.  xii. 

298:  12.  Lamb  refers  to  himself  here  as  "Jemmy."  The  origi- 
nal reads  "  Charley." 

298 :  14.  to  B .     In  the  original,  "  to  the  Temple." 

OLD    CHINA 

London  Magazine^  March,  1823. 

This  is  often  quoted  as  "  Wordsworth's  favourite  essay.'* 

300:13.    The  hays.     An  old  English  country  dance. 

300 :  14.    Couchant.     A  term  in  heraldry. 

300 :  16.  Cathay.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  empire  of  China  was 
known  as  Cathay. 

300 :  19.   Speciosa  miracula.     Dazzlingly  beautiful  wonders. 

300 :  26.  Summer  clouds.   Shakespeare,  Macbeth,  III.,  iv,,  110-112. 

301 :  21.   Corbeau.     A  dark  green  colour,  almost  black. 

301 :  34.  Wilderness  of  Lionardos.  See  Shakespeare's  Merchant 
of  Venice,  III.,  i.,  127-128. 

302:  21.   Children  in  the  Wood.     See  Notes,  p.  377. 

302 :  29.  Arden,  the  scene  of  Shakespeare's  As  You  Like  It.  Illy- 
ria,  of  Twelfth  Night. 


398  NOTES 

304:  11.    Superflux.    Supe^fluit3^ 

304 :  37.    Croesus.     A  king  of  Lydia  in  the  sixth  century,  b.c, 
possessed  of  great  wealth. 
304 :  38.  Jew  R .    The  great  financier  Rothschild. 

POPULAR  FALLACIES 

The  New  Monthly  Magazine^  1826. 

These  essays  appeared  from  time  to  time  in  the  magazine  during 
the  year  :  the  first  nine  in  the  number  for  January  ;  the  thirteenth, 
fourteenth,  and  fifteenth,  in  that  for  February  ;  the  tenth  and 
twelfth  (with  the  paper  on  the  "Genteel  Style  in  Writing," 
pp.  240-245),  in  that  for  March;  the  eleventh  alone  in  the  April; 
and  the  sixteenth  alone  in  the  September  number. 

Li  February  Lamb  wrote  to  Bernard  Barton:  "I  poke  out  a 
monthly  crudity  for  Colburn  in  his  magazine,  which  I  call  Popu- 
lar Fallacies,  and  periodically  crush  a  proverb  or  two,  setting  my 
folly  against  the  wisdom  of  nations." 

305 :  22.  Hickman.  Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas  points  out  that  this  is  the 
pugilist  described  as  the  "Gas-Man"  in  William  Hazlitt's  essay 
The  Fight. 

305  :  29.  Dryden.  John  Dryden  (1631-1700),  a  celebrated  Eng- 
lish poet  and  dramatist ;  author  of  many  satires  in  verse.  Poet 
laureate  (1670-1688). 

311  :  20.  Hudibras.  A  satirical  poem  directed  against  the  Puri- 
tans, written  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

314  :  10.    Informs.     Imbues  with  a  spirit. 

314  ;  20.    Dight.     Archaic  form  of  "  decked." 

314  :  31.  Kind.  Nature  ;  as  in  "  humankind."  See  Macbeth,  I., 
v.,  18. 

318 : 1.  We  love  to  have  our  friend,  etc.  See  Introduction, 
p.  xvii,  and  A  Dissertation  Upon  Roast  Pig,  151,  1-16. 

321  :  19.    Brook.     To  endure.     Archaic. 


NOTES  399 

322  :  16.   The  reference  is  to  Dante's  Inferno.     See  Notes,  p.  346. 

324 :  37.  Scylla.  A  beautiful  maiden  transformed  by  the  en- 
chantress Circe  into  a  monster  made  up  of  serpents  and  barking 
dogs.  She  dwelt  in  the  cliffs  and  was  dangerous  to  mariners. 
See  Homer's  Odyssey. 

325  :  13.   Presage.    A  pledge,  an  omen. 

327  :  18.  Imperial  forgetter,  etc.  Nebuchadnezzar.  See  Daniel 
ii.  "And  Nabuchodonosor  had  a  dream,  and  his  spirit  was  terri- 
fied with  it,  and  his  dream  went  out  of  his  mind." 

328  :  33.  Hesiod.  A  Greek  poet  of  the  eighth  century,  b.c.  He 
wrote  Works  and  Days,  composed  of  precepts,  and  Theogony,  an 
account  of  the  origin  of  the  world  and  of  the  birth  of  the  gods. 

333:3.  Noble  patient  in  Argos.  From  Horace's  Epistles,  II,, 
2,  129-130,  138-140.  The  patient  here  imagined  himself  at  a  per- 
formance, and  would  applaud  in  the  empty  theatre  ;  when  he  was 
cured  he  complained  that  he  had  been  robbed  of  great  pleasure, 
and  of  the  most  delightful  illusions. 

To  Wordsworth  Lamb  wrote  in  1833,  when  these  essays  were 
collected  and  republished :  "I  want  you  in  the  Popular  Fallacies 
to  like  the  Home  that  is  no  home,  and  Bising  with  the  Lark.'''' 


INDEX 


(The  references  are  to  pages  in  the  Notes.) 


Abyssinian  traveller,  391. 

Actfeon,  381. 

iEsculapius,  387. 

Aganippe,  344. 

agnize,  339. 

Alcldes,  374. 

Alexander,  350. 

Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  352. 

Angelo,  Michael,  369. 

Apelles,  385. 

Apollo,  337. 

Arcadia,  338. 

Arion,  356. 

Aristotle,  391. 

Arride,  341. 

Avernus,  373. 

Bacchus,  .393. 

Bacon,   Francis    (Lord  Veruii 

•    377. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  383. 

Bodleian  Library,  340. 

Bonaventura,  St.,  351. 

Brooke,  Lord  (Fulke  Greville), 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  .341-42. 

B uncle,  John,  352. 

Burton,  Robert,  352. 

Cam,  .343. 
Candlemas,  .350. 
Carthusian,  358. 
Cassiopeia,  .379. 
2d 


im), 


cates,  .345. 

Cato,  378. 

Centaur,  374. 

Cervantes,  358. 

Charon,  384. 

Chartreuse  (see  Carthusian). 

Chimaera,  365. 

Cicero,  348. 

Clarissa  Harlowe,  383. 

Colet,  John,  360. 

Complete  Angler,  352. 

Congreve,  William,  370-71. 

Cotton,  Charles,  354. 

Cowley,  Abraham,  347. 

Cressida,  374. 

Dante  Alighieri,  346. 

devoir,  341. 

Diana,  353. 

Dido,  362. 

Don  Quixote,  358. 

Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  383 


352.    Elgin  Marbles,  374. 
Elia,  Bridget,  .355. 
Elia,  James,  .3()5. 
Elysian,  .347. 
Etherege,  Sir  George,  .'3()7. 

Faerie  Queene,  .364. 
Falstaff,  Sir  John,  ;i49. 
fantastic,  fantastical,  .'nW. 
401 


402 


INDEX 


Farquhar,  George,  378o 
FieldiDg,  Heury,  382. 
Figiirautes,  384. 
flameu,  361. 
Foppington,  377. 
Fuller,  Thomas,  349. 

G.  D.,  342. 

Garrick,  David,  348. 

gaudy-clay,  338,  340. 

Gay,  John,  358. 

genius,  33(5. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  382. 

Goshen,  347. 

Gi-eville,  Fulke  (see  Lord  Brooke). 

Hades,  355. 

Harpies,  346. 

Hazlitt,  William,  392. 

Helicon,  344. 

Herculauean,  Herculaueum,  336. 

Hey  wood,  Thomas,  ;362. 

Hogarth,  William,  336. 

Hooker,  348,  369. 

humourists,  336. 

Hydras,  365,  374,  386. 

lago,  376. 

Janus,  341. 

John,  Sir  {see  Falstaff). 
Johnson,  Dr.,  338. 
Jonson,  Ben,  357. 

Kemhle,  John,  363. 

Lear,  374. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci  (.see  Vinci) . 

Lethe,  371. 

Liston.  379. 


Lully,  Kaymund,  357. 

Machaon,  387. 

Machiavel,  354, 

Mammon,  335. 

manes,  336. 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  383 

Marsyas,  339. 

Marvell,  Andrew,  368. 

Middletonian,  see  Middleton,  391. 

mumping,  350. 

Munden,  Joseph  Shepherd,  371. 

Naiads,  368. 
Xereids,  365. 

Newcastle,  Margaret,  352. 
Novello,  356. 

oholus,  350. 
Ophelia,  362. 
orgasm,  359. 
Orpheus,  337,  384. 
Ossian,  335. 
Othello,  376. 
Ovid,  362. 

Pan,  338. 

Parnassus,  343. 

Penn,  William,  359. 

Persic,  see  Persian,  354. 

Phsedrus,  347. 

Phoehus  Apollo  (.see  Apollo). 

phoenix,  375. 

Plato,  343. 

Plotinus,  349.' 

Plumers,  338. 

Pluto,  359. 

Pope,  Alexander,  354. 

Pythagoras,  '^1. 

Raphael,  366. 


INDEX 


40^ 


regale,  345. 
Religio  Medici,  342. 
Richardson,  Samuel,  383. 
Rousseau,  347. 
rubric,  3G1. 

Saucho  Panza,  358. 
School  for  Scandal,  350. 
Selden,  John,  340. 
Shaftesburj-,  Lord,  382. 
Shallow,  INIaster,  357. 
Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  350. 
Siddous,  Mrs.,  371. 
Speak  to  it,  367. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  364. 
Steele,  Sir  Richard,  349. 
Sterne,  La^Yrence,  365. 
Stonehenge,  363. 
Swift,  Jonathan,  363. 

Tantalus,  387. 

Tartarus,  348. 

Tempe,  392. 

Temple,  Sir  William,  389. 


Terence,  348. 
Thomson,  James,  363. 
Titian,  394. 

Vanbrugh,  Sir  John,  377. 
Vandyke,  Sir  Ailtbony,  354. 
Yerulam,  Lord  (see  Bacon). 
Vicar  of  Wakefield,  382. 
Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  362. 

Walton,  Izaak,  352. 
Watchet,  346. 
ichilom,  351. 
Wilkins,  Peter,  347.. 
Wither,  George,  387. 
Woolman,  John,  359. 
loots,  369. 
Wycherley,  William,  378. 

ycleped,  361. 
Yorick,  365. 
younkers,  369. 

Zimmerman,  235. 


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Goldsmith's  Vicar  of  "Wakefield.  Edited  by  H.  "W.  BOYNTON,  Phillips 
Academy,  Andover,  Mass. 

Grimm's  Fa'iry  Tales.  Edited  by  James  H.  Fassett,  Superintendent  of 
Schools,  Nashua,  N.H. 

Hawthorne's  Grandfather's  Chair.  Edited  by  H.  H.  Kingsley,  Superin- 
tendent of  Schools,  Evanston,  111. 

Hawthorne's  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables.  Edited  by  Clyde  Furst, 
Secretary  of  Teachers  College,  Columbia  University. 

Hawthorne's  The  Wonder-Book.  Edited  by  L.  E.  Wolfe,  Superintendent 
of  Schools,  San  Antonio,  Texas. 

Hawthorne's  Twice-Told  Tales.  Edited  by  R.  C.  Gaston,  Richmond  Hill 
High  School,  Borough  of  Queens,  NewYork  Citv. 

Homer's  Iliad.    Translated  by  Lang,  Leaf,  and  Myers. 

Homer's  Odyssey.    Translated  by  Butcher  and  Lang. 

Irving's  Alhambra.  Edited  by  Alfred  M.  Hitchcock,  Public  High 
School,  Hartford,  Conn. 

Irving's  Life  of  Goldsmith.  Edited  by  Gilbert  Sykes  Blakely, 
Teacher  of  English  in  the  Morris  High  School,  New  York  City. 

Irving's  Sketch  Book. 

Keary's  Heroes  of  Asgard.  Edited  by  Charles  H.  Morse,  Superintend- 
ent of  Schools,  Medford,  Mass. 


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